Jodi Picoult

“I sometimes wonder if it's just me, or if there are other women who figure out where they're supposed to be by going nowhere.”

“As she gets sicker, she fades a little more, until I am afraid one day I will wake up and not be able to see her at all.”

“I used to sit in front of my father's Jag, watching the raindrops run their kamikaze suicide missions from one edge of the windshield to the wiper blade.”

“Tears have a whole different melody, didn't they? without the pain threaded through them?_______ nineteen minutes .”

“And that's what I think love is...when your hindsight's twenty-twenty, and you still wouldn't change a thing.”

“We are never the people we think we are. We are the ones we pretend, with all our hearts we can't become.”

“When you have been burned by fire once, you don't leap into the flames again.”

“Sometimes Chris wished he could sneak a peek at the back of the book, so to speak, and see how it was all going to turn out, so that he wouldn't have to bother going through the motions.”

“People believe in God because they don't have any other explanation for things that happen.”

“Well, I had the other problem," I told him. "I had the heart of the relationship, and no body to grow it in.""What happened then?""What else," I said. "It broke.”

“For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.”

“Teachers deserve respect," I explain. "Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?”

“In my opinion, the very fact that Mark doesn't know this diagnostic criterion suggests that he's a lot closer to actual retardation than I am.”

“The best way to prevent a heartache was to cushion the coming blow.”

“That maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.”

“I don't have children. I can't say I'd feel the same way if one of them was killed. And I don't have the answers-believe me, if I did, I'd be a lot richer-but you know, I'm starting to think that's okay. Maybe instead of looking for answers, we ought to be asking some questions instead. Like: What's the lesson we're teaching here? What if it's different every time? What if justice isn't equal to due process? Because at the end of the day, this is what we're left with: a victim, who's become a file to be dealt with, instead of a little girls, or a husband. An inmate who doesn't want to know the name of a correctional officer's child because that makes the relationship too personal. A warden who carries out executions even if he doesn't think they should happen in principle. And and ACLU lawyer who's suppose to go to the office, close the case, and move on. What we're left with is death, with the humanity removed from it." I hesitated a moment. "So you tell me...did this execution really make you feel safer? Did it bring us all together? Or did it drive us further apart?”

“You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don't want to say it out loud-for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there's a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together-huddle and circle our wagons-and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? And what if, God forbid, they got it wrong?”

“But sometimes the key to happiness is just expecting a little bit less. That way, you'll never be disappointed.”

“Being scared just meant you had something worth coming back to.”

“Love's a tidal wave," she says."Because it sweeps you off your feet?" I ask. "No. Because it sucks you under and you drown.""But sometimes," I point out, "it's the only thing that keeps you afloat.”

“So don't judge me, unless you've fallen asleep on a couch with your ill child, thinking this night might be her last.Ask instead: would you do it?Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love?Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?”

“This was why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn't have words big enough to describe them.”

“But Marice, he rode off to save you, and wound up leaving you behind forever. Is it really worth dying for the person you love?"She thinks about it for a moment. "That's not the real question, Oliver. What you should be asking is, can you live without her?”

“People in the real world would kill for a happily ever after, and you're willing to just throw it away ?"I look away from her. "It's hardly a happily ever after when you wind up right at the beginning.”

“You can't be real," Delilah murmurs. "Says who?" I ask. "Did you really think that a story exists only when you're reading it?”

“Marina sighs. "Love's a tidal wave," she says. "Because it sweeps you off your feet?" I ask. "No. Because it sucks you under and you drown.”

“For the first time in my life I begin to understand how a parent might hit a child ..it’s because you can look into their eyes and see a reflection of yourself that you wish you hadn’t.”

“When you let people into the inner sanctum of your life, you risk having them see the heart of you.”

“At any moment, a person can start over. And that's not half a life, but simply a real one." (from Vanishing Acts)”

“There are building blocks of love and the very bottom layer is comfort. (from Vanishing Acts)”

“Please come to the dance, because you're my music.”

“I have come to believe that this life I'm wearing will never really fit.”

“My mother and Joe have a lovers' shorthand, an economy of gestures that comes when you are close enough to someone to speak their language. I wonder if my mother and father ever had that, or if my mother was always just trying to decipher him.”

“This isn't a lie, actually. I don't care why Edward left. All I really want to know is why I wasn't enough to make him stay.”

“We take the elevator to the third floor, to the office of Dr. Harrison Chance. His name alone has put me off. Why not Dr. Victor?”

“He thought of the grammar of Gaelic, in which you did not say you were in love withsomeone, but that you “had love toward” her, as if itwere a physical thing you could present and hold—a bundle of tulips, a golden ring, a parcel of tenderness.”

“I closed my eyes and curled my fists around the things I knew for sure:That a scallop has thirty-five eyes, all blue.That a tuna will suffocate if it ever stops swimming.That I was loved.That this time, it was not me who broke”

“This was the reason there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that didn't have words big enough to describe them.”

“And just like that, something inside shifted very subtly, so that all the empty spaces in him suddenly disappeared, so that his breath timed to hers, so that his blood sang. This is why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn’t have words big enough to describe them.”

“How come people don't do things like that nowadays? You grope around in the back of a sedan in high school and you think you're in love. Nobody gets swept off their feet anymore.”

“I can see myself now, she said. And I can see what I want to be, ten years from now. But I don't understand how I'm going to get from here to there.”

“If you met a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they had tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”

“Things don't always look as they seem.”

“We could all be lucky. We could all be what we want to be, instead of who someone else told us to be.”

“Sometimes, to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least." - Julia Romano”

“so familiar that you slide back to the place where you fit.”

“To be fair, I am not the same man. The one who listened. The one who believed her.”

“if you don't get sick, you won't get well.”

“Chase every rung of possibility, and you still get absolutely nowhere.”

“I wonder if it's putting on someone else's skin for a while that she likes so much, or if it's the option of being able to send back a circumstance that just doesn't suit you.”