Jodi Picoult

“You can miss a person you've never known.”

“When you think you're right, you're most likely wrong.”

“Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.”

“I imagine having that sixth sense, the certainty that what I'm looking for is within reach, even if it's still hidden.”

“But there's an enormous difference between an audience that's watching you because they can't wait to see what comes next and an audience that's watching you because they're waiting for you to fail.”

“It is so strange, to encounter an ex. It's as if you're in a foreign film, and what you're saying face-to-face has nothing to do with the subtitles flowing beneath you. We are so careful not to touch, although once upon a time, I slept plastered to him in our bed, like lichen on a rock. We are two strangers who knows every shameful secret, every hidden freckle, every fatal flaw in each other.”

“But there is a different between mending someone who's broken and finding someone who makes you complete.”

“There's a cliff at the end point of a person's life; most us of peer over the edge of it, hanging on. That's why, when someone chooses to let go, it's so dramatically visible. The body will seem almost transparent. The eys will be looking at something the rest of us can't see.”

“I tell you this as a cautionary tale: beware of getting what you want. It's bound to disappoint you.”

“The bottom line in both cases is that people don't change; that no matter how charming you are and how fiercely you love, you cannot turn a person into something she's not.”

“The minute I stand up, I've jumped off the cliff. The world goes by in a haze of color and light; my weight accelerates, head-over-heels. Then I think, falling is the first step in learning how to fly.”

“I would prove to you that being different isn't a death sentence but a call to arms.”

“Anger, though, is too fierce a flame to last for long, and when it burned out, I was left numb and wondering.”

“It reminded Lacy of running into someone you hadn't seen for a while, and finding her bald and missing her eyebrows: you knew she was in the throes of chemotherapy, but pretended you didn't, because it was easier that way for both of you.”

“Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once you get God on board.”

“Just because you choose to leave a place did not mean that you could escape taking it with you. A man and a woman who lived together long enough might swap traits, until they found parts of themselves in each other. Jettison a personality and you just might find it taking up residence in the heart of the person you loved most.”

“I wont let you fall," he said, and because he never did, the world from that vantage point stops being so crazy.”

“The scariest thing in the world is thinking someone you love is going to die.”

“I was starting to see that what looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.”

“It never failed to amaze me how the most ordinary day could be catapulted into the extraordinary in the blink of an eye.”

“Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.”

“No, honestly, my mouth shouldn't be able to function unless my brain's engaged.”

“I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination.”

“She wondered how big the world was, really, when you crossed it, instead of traced it with your finger on the map.”

“The age wasn't as important as the milestones.”

“Just because you didn't speak the facts out loud didn't erase their existence. Silence was just a quieter way to lie.”

“May be the question we need to ask isn't whether there's any fresh twenty first century sin...but whether the people who define sin have changed, because of the times.”

“What Trixie wanted, most of all, what she couldn't have - to go back to being the kind of girl who worried about things like science tests and whether any college would admit her, instead of being the kind of girl everyone worried about.”

“I would rather be in minority and be right, than in the majority and wrong.”

“They were different places in that same relationship, and like anything that's out of alignment, they were destined to crash sooner or later.”

“Could you really love someone who was capable of falling in love with somebody else?”

“Danger came in different packages, at different points in a lifetime.”

“Your child is hurt. How quickly can you make it better?What if you can't?”

“There was no easy switch that she could flip to stem the flow of feelings, no way to drain the memories that pooled like acid in her stomach because her heart no longer knew what to do with them.”

“Men. You can't live with them...and you can't legally shoot them. I tossed out my husband eight years ago and got a llama instead. Best decision I ever made.”

“It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love all of my kids, period, and they're all your favorites in different ways. But ask any parent who's been through some kind of crisis surrounding a child--a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem--and we will tell you the truth. When something upends the equilibrium--when one child needs you more than the others--that imbalance becomes a black hole. You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings. What we really hope is that each child gets a turn. That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times.All this goes to hell when two of your children are pitted against each other, and both of them want you on their side.”

“When I first met Cara, she was twelve and angry at the world. Her parents had split up, her brother was gone, and her mom was infatuated with some guy who was missing vowels in his unpronounceable last name. So I did what any other man in that situation would do: I came armed with gifts. I bought her things that I thought a twelve-year-old would love: a poster of Taylor Lautner, a Miley Cyrus CD, nail polish that glowed in the dark. "I can't wait for the next Twilight movie," I babbled, when I presented her with the gifts in front of Georgie. "My favorite song on the CD is 'If We Were a Movie.' And I almost went with glitter nail polish, but the salesperson said this is much cooler, especially with Halloween coming up."Cara looked at her mother and said, without any judgment, "I think your boyfriend is gay.”

“Nurse: "You look like a pharmaceutical rep. you can leave samples in the closet."Joe: "I'm actually a lawyer."Nurse: "My condolences.”

“Edward: "Wait--you were trying to hit on me?"Susan: "Damn straight."Edward: "The thing is, I'm not. Straight, I mean.”

“Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions.”

“Logically, I understand that it wasn't Edward's fault my family fell apart after he left. But when you're eleven years old, you don't give a flip about logic. You just really miss holding your big brother's hand.”

“The Thai people are pathologically shy. Combine that with a reluctance to lose face by giving a wrong answer, and it makes for a painfully long [ESL] class. Usually I ask the students to work on exercises in small groups, and then I move around and check their progress. But for days like today, when I'm grading on participation, speaking up in public is a necessary evil. "Jao," I say to a man in my class. "You own a pet store, and you want to convince Jaidee to buy a pet." I turn to a second man. "Jaidee, you do not want to buy that pet. Let's hear your conversation."They stand up, clutching their papers. "This dog is reccommended," Jao begins."I have one already," Jaidee replies."Good job!" I encourage. "Jao, give him a reason why he should buy your dog.""This dog is alive," Jao adds.Jaidee shrugs. "Not everyone wants a pet that is alive."Well, not all days are successes...”

“and yet, you never knew wwhat you were capable of until you arrived at that given moment. Life was just a whole string of spots where you continued to surprise yourself.”

“ How are you going to know who I am, she finally said, if I dont look like me?”

“She knew all sorts of four letter words now; they just weren't the ones that most people considered foul language.Love.Help.Rape.Stop.Then.”

“Is there anything more solid, more right, than knowing you child was where she ought to be?”

“How do you tell someone that you weren't the person he thought you were? And more importantly, how did you tell him that you'd meant the things you'd said, when everything else about you turned out to be a lie.”

“There were some people who hit your life so hard, they left a stain on your future.”

“It was the sort of place where you could hear the tumblers of your mind falling into place as you pieced thought together, as you tried to match it to action.”

“It was simply what happened when the histories of two people dovetailed into one.”