Jodi Picoult

“Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you ran the risk of losing your child.”

“There's some illogical part of me that still believes if you want Superman to show up, first there's got to be someone worth saving.”

“Everytime I look at a zebra, I can't figure out whether it's black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and that frustrates me.”

“I personally subscribe to the belief that normal is just a setting on the dryer.”

“If he says jump, she doesn't even ask "How high?" She goes out and buys a pogo stick.”

“Perhaps he d always known that the truth of a person lies in the heart.”

“On a really dark night, you can see between 1,000 and 1,500 stars, and there are millions more that haven't been discovered. 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.-Brian Fitzgerald”

“I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has its own zip code...You don't love someone because they're perfect...You love them in spite of the fact that they're not.”

“When you are a kid you have your own language, and unlike French or Spanish or whatever you start learning in fourth grade, this one you are born with, and eventually lose...Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult...is only a slow sewing it shut.”

“Is Fate getting what you deserve, or deserving what you get?”

“Sometimes I think my whole life has been about holding on to you.”

“Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had.”

“Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers, interrupt dinner.”

“What if the one I choose to discount is one who has been truly hurt?”

“Having to face him at a competency hearing is like getting to hell and finding out that the only food available is raw liver-insult added to injury.”

“Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.”

“Rest easy, real mothers. The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.”

“We're [parents]) always bluffing, pretending we know best, when most of the time we're just praying we won't screw up too badly.”

“parenting isn't a noun but a verb--an ongoing process instead of an accomplishment. And that no matter how many years you put into the job, the learning curve is, well, fairly flat.”

“Frankly, I wonder who Frank was, and why he has an adverb all to himself.”

“Just when you think you've got your life by the reins, that's when it's most likely to run away with you.”

“Justification is a remarkable thing-takes all those solid lines and blurs them, so that honor becomes as supple as a willow, and ethics burst like soap bubbles.”

“Maybe honesty is overvalued. What's truly priceless is picking out from a stream of falsehoods the ones you most need to hear.”

“What good is the legal process if people can decide their motives are bigger than the law?”

“Envy comes from wanting something that isn't yours, but grief comes from losing something you've already had.”

“But what if your obsession has nothing to do with drugs or thrills or money? What if what you want most in the world is to recapture the way life was a week, a month, a year ago-and you are willing to do whatever it takes?”

“What's stronger-the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?”

“I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing.”

“There is a gulf as wide as an ocean between should and want, and I am drowning in it.”

“Does fate ever play by the rules?”

“And I think, not for the first time, that what is immoral is not always wrong.”

“eskimos maybe? believed stars were holes in the sky where people who died could peek through at you”

“I would figure out, later, how to explain to my boss that, for me, Delia will never be a story, but a happy ending. ”

“You’ll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you’re still the one in control.”

“You live and let live, eventually that becomes enough.”

“Unlike Elise, who could discover parts of a person they didn't even know were absent, you specialized in tangible, but that, I feared, was only a matter of time.”

“If you want something to be true badly enough, you can rewrite it that way, in your head. You can even start to believe it.”

“The only way someone can leave you is if you let them.”

“If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice it until it's missing.”

“You make yourself strong because it's expected of you. You become confident because someone beside you is unsure. You turn into the person others need you to be.”

“Who I am, and what I am capable of doing has always managed to surprise me.”

“You can fool yourself, you know. You'd think it's impossible, but it turns out it's the easiest thing of all.”

“Risk always looks different when you're beating the system than when you've been beaten.”

“Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth.”

“I understand better than she'd imagine that history is indelible. You can mask it; you can patch it smooth and clear; but you always know what's hidden underneath.”

“I could tell her from personal experience that when people we love make choices we don't always understand them. But we can go on loving them, just the same. It isn't a matter of comprehension. It's forgiveness. But all this took me a lifetime to discover, and where has it gotten me?... Some lessons can't be taught, they simply have to be learned.”

“Just because you keep something a secret doesn't mean it never happened, no matter how much you want that to be true.”

“You know how sometimes, your life is so perfect you’re afraid for the next moment, because it couldn’t possibly be quite as good? That’s what it felt like.”

“I have no idea what Andrew might have done, and I do not ask. She believes that I can fix this, and like always, that's enough to make me think that I can. "I'll take care of it,: I say, when what I really mean is: I'll take care of you. ”

“I knew her well enough to understand that when Delia pushed you away, it was her way of making sure she didn't get shoved first.”