Jodi Picoult

“That's the crazy thing about lies. You start to fall for them, yourself.”

“Sometimes knowing what's right isn't a rational decision, or even what works on paper. Sometimes leaving is the best course of action after all.”

“Sometimes parents don't find what they're looking for it their child, so they plant seeds for what they'd like to grow there instead. I've witnessed this with the former hockey player who takes his son out to skate before he can even walk. Or in the mother who gave up her ballet dreams when she married, but now scrapes her daughter's hair into a bun and watched from the wings of the stage. We are not, as you'd expect, orchestrating their lives; we are not even trying for a second chance. We are hoping that if this one thing takes root, it might take up enough light and space to keep something else from developing in our children: the disappointment we've already lived.”

“When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a piece of yourself inside her, because sometimes that is what it takes to claim.”

“...when they look at me, I so badly want to be who they see.”

“If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me.”

“Do you ever go back?"Ruthann nods, "When I need to remember where I came from, or where I'm headed.”

“What could you give me," I ask, my voice shaking, "to make me forget ... that you forgot about me?”

“Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength - and the honesty - to break them down.”

“Life is not a plot; it's in the details.”

“Memories aren't stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, if you ask me, but in the spaces between any given two people.”

“Neither of us, it turns out, has been the only one who lost someone she loved.”

“In half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past.”

“How do you walk into someone's life again after twenty-eight years? How do you pick up, when you were too young to know where you left off.”

“Sometimes we don't know we're dreaming; we can't even fathom that we're asleep.”

“Eric understands that the world is rarely the way it is supposed to be. And he knows that, given the chance, we don't have to wait for someone to make messes of our lives. We do a good enough job, ourselves.”

“Elise Vasquez and I stand shoulder to shoulder, watching the woman we both feel we lost, and may be never really had.”

“Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't stand the thought of them changing? Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't see clearly?”

“When your mother is made out of your dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.”

“For God's sake, if I learned anything during this damn trial it's that the only way someone can leave you is if you let them. And I'm not doing that, Dee. It may look like that today, or tomorrow, or even a month from now, but one day you're going to wake up and see that this whole time you've been gone, you've only been headed back to where you started. And I'll be there, waiting." He leans forward and kisses me once, feather-light, on the lips. "It's not like I'm not letting you go," he murmurs. "I'm just trusting you enough to come back.”

“She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be someone else.”

“This is love, I think. A place where people who have been alone may lock together like hawks and spin in the air, dizzy with surprise at the connection. A place you go willingly, and with wonder”

“I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.”

“But I think half the battle is figuring out what works for you, and I am much better at being a mother than I ever would have been as a lawyer. I sometimes wonder if it is just me, or if there are other women who figure out where they are supposed to be by going nowhere." - My Sister's Keeper”

“You came back fighting and furious at me. You told me you'd been looking for mermaids, and I interrupted you. [...] I said that next time, you had to take me with you.""Was there a next time?""Well, you tell me, you don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?”

“I do not have the money anymore. It was all yours, after all. I slipped the check into the silk lining of the coffin when I kissed you good-bye for the last time.”

“You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. But it's a catch-22: all of those things you're willing to lose are what make you recognizable. Lose them, and you've lost yourself.”

“I think you're the only person who gets me. When I'm with you, the world doesn't feel like a problem I can't figure out. Please come to the dance, because you're my music.”

“I'm telling you, if aliens landed on earth today and took a good hard look at why babies get born, they'd conclude that most people had children by accident, or because they drink too much on a certain night, or because birth control isn't one hundred percent, or for a thousand other reasons that really aren't very flattering.”

“If we don't change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going.”

“A mathematical formula for happiness:Reality divided by Expectations.There were two ways to be happy:improve your reality or lower your expectations.”

“she didn't need anyone. At Wheeler, even when she stood out with her pink hair and quilter army-surplus jacket and combat bots, she did this without apology. It was a great irony that the very fact of a relationship with her would diminish her appeal, that the moment she came to love me back and depend on me as much as I depended on her, she would no longer be a truly independent spirit. No way in hell was I going to be the one to take that quality away from her.”

“she told me she'd be a phoenix." The image of the mythical creature rising from the ashes glitters in my mind. "They don't really exist." "She said that depends on whether or not there's someone who can see them.”

“But this is inaccurate. A runaway train is an accident. Me, I'll jump in front of the tracks. I'll even tie myself down in front of the speeding engine. There's some illogical part of me hat still believes if you want Superman to show up, first there's got to be someone worth saving.”

“On the surface, we're polar opposites. Under the skin, though, we're the same: people think they know what they're getting, and they're always wrong.”

“Some women are meant to change the world, while others are meant to hold it together. And then there are those of us who simply don't want to be in it, because we know no matter how much we struggle, we can't comfortably fit.”

“Time is an optical illusion-- never quite as solid or strong as we think it is.”

“Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.”

“When she smiles, it feels like the first warm day of March-- after an eternity of snow, when you suddenly remember how summer feels on the backs of your bare calves & in the part of your hair.”

“It's like picking up an unfamiliar piece of sheet music & starting to stumble through it, only to realize it is a melody you'd once learned by heart, one you can play without even trying.”

“It is so easy to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up at the sky to realize it isn't that way at all.”

“I found plain truth very interesting.”

“maybe there is more to a person than a body and a mind. maybe something else figures into the mix— not a soul, exactly, but a spirit that hints you might one day be greater, stronger than you are now. a promise; a potential.”

“You know what I noticed when I was with Jacob? In your world, people can reach each other in an instant. There's the telephone, and the fax - and on the computer you can talk to someone all the way around the world. You've got people telling their secrets on TV talk shows, and magazines that publish pictures of movie stars trying to hide their homes. All those connections, but everyone there seems so lonely.”

“Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.”

“All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.”

“A sacrament--like marriage--means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you're modeling God. And God never gives up.”

“Did you ever wonder if the person in the picture is the same one you see when you look in the mirror?" - "That's the eternal question, isn't it? Are we born who we are, or do we make ourselves that way?”

“The best parenting advice I ever got was from a labor nurse who told me the following:1. After your baby gets here, the dog will just be a dog.2. The terrible twos last through age three.3. Never ask your child an open-ended question, such as "Do you want to go to bed now?" You won't want to hear the answer, believe me. "Do you want me to carry you upstairs, or do you want to walk upstairs to go to bed?" That way, you get the outcome you want and they feel empowered.”

“Coop kissed me deeply, drawing my breath from me in a long, sweet ribbon. "Perhaps I haven't mentioned it, but I'm an expert when it comes to first steps."Are you," I said. "Then tell me how."You close your eyes," Coop answered, "and jump.”