Jodi Picoult

“I'd like to say that this time I'd kill myself too..but I've never had that kind of courage.”

“I have always envied people who believe strongly in religion, people who could face a tragedy by praying and know that it would be all right. As unscientific as it seems, well, it would be nice to lay the responsibilities and pain on someone else's larger shoulders.”

“Quem diria que as palavras que nunca chegamos a dizer assentassem tão pesadamente?”

“Life was all about being in a certain place, at a certain time.”

“And oh she had been broken. She hid it well, but Ross knew from personal experience that once you had put the pieces together, even though you might look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall”

“Memories are like a still life painted by ten different student artists: some will be blue-based; others red; some will be as stark as Picasso and others as rich as Rembrandt; some will be foreshortened and others distant. Recollections are in the eye of the beholder; no two held up side by side will ever quite match.”

“I know what it's like when the things you believe make you feel like you're on the outside looking in.”

“But still, it looked completely natural, as if we had been kissing at the ends of sentences for ages, while the rest of the world was still hung up on punctuation.”

“Religion was supposed to be a blanket drawn up to your chin to keep you warm, a promise that when it came to the end, you wouldn't die alone - but it could just as easily leave you shivering out in the cold, if WHAT you believed became more important than the fact THAT you believed.”

“A place like this wears down everything, and tolerance is no exception. In here, coexistence passes for forgiveness. You do not learn to like something you abhor; you come to live with it...You live and let live, and eventually that becomes enough.”

“if there isn’t a them, there can’t be an us.”

“I know Mark,' I reply. 'And I don't like him.''But I do. And part of being social means being civil to someone you don't like.''That's stupid. It's a huge world. why not just get up and walk away?''Because that's rude,' Jess explains.'I think it's rude to stick a smile on your face and pretend you like talking to someone when in reality you'd rather be sticking bamboo slivers under your fingernails.”

“I don't understand why people never say what they mean. It's like the immigrants who come to a country and learn the language but are completely baffled by idioms. (Seriously, how could anyone who isn't a native English speaker 'get the picture,' so to speak, and not assume it has something to do with a photo or a painting?)”

“Jacob looks like a totally normal young man. He's clearly intelligent. But having his day disrupted probably makes him feel the same way I would if I was suddenly told to bungee off the top of the Sears Tower.”

“Jos plaukai dabar yra ilgesni, o abipus jos burnos matyti dvi plonos rauksles, tarytum kliausteliai, gaubiantys milijona zodziu, kuriu as neturejau galimybes isgirsti.”

“In my previous life I was a civil attorney. At one point I truly believed that was what I wanted to be- but that was before I'd been handed a fistful of crushed violets from a toddler. Before I understood that the smile of a child is a tattoo: indelible art. ”

“But once you throw a stone, there are ripples in the pond, even if you remove the rock.”

“A lot of people have opinions, but I don't think they ever ask themselves why their opinions are what they are.”

“The best place to cry is on a mother's arms.”

“Relationships always sounded so physically painful: you fell in love, you broke a heart, you lost your head. Was it any wonder that people came through the experience with battle scars?”

“Oh,that's right. You're a...what did you call it? Ah, a ghost hunter. You don't have to see things to believe them."Adam's gaze locked onto the persecutor's. "Maybe you've got that backward," he said. "Maybe it's just that I believe things you cant see.”

“But rules only work when everyone plays by them. What happens when someone doesn't, and the fallout bleeds right into his life? Whats stronger- the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?”

“Then Henry speaks again. "Did he do it?"I turn to him slowly. "Does it matter?”

“My high school guidance counselor, Mrs. Inverholl, once had me take an aptitude test to figure out my future. The number one job recommendation for my set of skills was an air traffic accident investigator, of which there are fewer than fifty in the world. The number two job was a museum curator for Chinese-American studies. The number three job was a circus clown.”

“I don't know what he means by that, but I nod and smile at him. You'd be surprised at how far that response can get you in a conversation where you are completely confused.”

“The brain of a person in love will show activity in the amygdala, which is associated with gut feelings, and in the nucleus accumbens, an area associated with rewarding stimuli that tends to be active in drug abusers. Or, to recap: the brain of a person in love doesn't look like the brain of someone overcome by deep emotion. It looks like the brain of a person who's been snorting coke.”

“How am I suppose to think about Anna Fitzgerald when I’m wondering whether Julia has ever woken up in someone’s arms and for just a moment, before the sleep cleared from her mind, thought maybe it was me?”

“You'd think someone who'd been to medical school would be able to hear through a stethoscope that somebody was empty inside.”

“It was the first time she'd discovered something she really didn't want to find, and she didn't know what to do once she'd found it.”

“I don't want to make the same mistake twice. I don't want to tell myself it's over when it's not.”

“When you don't know where you're headed, you find places no one else would ever think to explore.”

“No matter who you are, there is some part of you that always wishes you were someone else.”

“The English judged a person so that they'd be justified in casting her out. The Amish judged a person so that they'd be justified in welcoming her back. Where I'm from, if someone is accused of sinning, it's not so that others can place blame. It's so that the person can make amends and move on.”

“Our culture promotes individuality, while the Amish are deeply entrenched in community. To us, if someone stands out, it's no big deal because diversity is respected and expected. To the Amish, there's no room for deviation from the norm. It's important to fit in, because that similarity of identity is what defines the society. If you don't fit in, the consequences are psychological tragic, you stand alone when all you've ever known is being part of the group.”

“That's what love is, when your hindsight is 20/20, and you still wouldn't change a thing.”

“We dont have to accept each others beliefs..but we do have to accept each others right to believe them.”

“Sometimes the hardest thing to hear is the truth.”

“Babies don't come with instruction booklets. You'd learn the same way we all do -- you'd read up on dinosaurs, you'd Google backhoes and skidders. And you don't need a penis to go buy a baseball glove.”

“You can be strapped to the most stable chair and still feel the world give way beneath you.”

“The baby's body lay in a bassinet. He was the size of a half loaf of bread, his bones light as a bird's and stretched with thin skin.”

“When it rains," her father said "it pours.”

“Safety is relative. You can be so close to shore that you can practically feel it under your feet, when you suddenly find yourself breaking apart on the rocks.”

“McAfee, I could try this case in my sleep and still win.""Guess that's your plan, then, since you're clearly dreaming.”

“If I tell you another seven hundred times, maybe one of these days you might turn your clothes right side out when you put them in the hamper, eh?”

“I've got a Don Baylor," J.T. said."California sucks this year."Ralph snickered. "I wouldn't use a Baylor card to scrape dog shit off the street.”

“Losing Chloe had been like reading a wonderfulook only to realize that all the pages past a certain point were blank.”

“In life, perfect pitch is the ability to know someone from the inside out, even better maybe than she knows herself.”

“So what do you think the physical effect was?"Roman Laughed. "Buddy," he said, "she was tripping.”

“A very wise man once told me that you can't look back-you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.”

“After all, once you know that part of something exists, it stands to reason that the rest of it is somewhere out there, too.”