Jodi Picoult

“In the end, though, I did not kill my sister. She did it all on her own. Or at least this is what I tell myself.”

“How could I not have seen this coming, when I looked into your eyes and vowed to be with you forever?”

“You know, the mind is a remarkable thing. Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting. It scars all the time, but it heals.”

“Best place to be?" Adrienne asks after a moment. On the other side of this wall. In my bed, at home. Anywhere with Nathaniel. "Before," I answer, because I know she'll understand.”

“There's got to be a moment when that baby [flying] squirrel looks from the end of one branch to the tree six feet away and thinks twice about making a leap. Falling in love is no different; it's the moment that we close our eyes and throw away everything that seems reasonable and hope to God there's someone or something waiting to catch us on the other side.”

“As it turns out, you can function while your heart is being torn to shreds.”

“ Falling is the first step in learning how to fly. ”

“And when your wife is not the same person you fell in love with eight years ago, where exactly does that leave you? Do you try to get to know who she has become, and hope for the best? Or do you keep deceiving yourself in the hope that she might wake up one morning and have gone back to the woman she used to be? May be, Caleb thinks with a small shock, he isn't the same person he once was, either.”

“the relationship between people knot so easily, there needs to be a person skilled at working free the threads. Sometimes, though, the only way to extricate a tangle is to cut it out and start fresh.”

“Those eyes, they've got a history with mine. They were the first things I saw when I came to, after being hit in the skull with a baseball thrown by Patrick at Little League. They were the fortification I needed at sixteen to ride the chairlift at Sugarloaf, although I am terrified of heights. For almost my whole life, they've told me I'm doing all right, during moments when it was not in my own power to answer.”

“How far can a person go... and still live with himself.”

“The future may unfold in indelible strokes, but it doesn't mean we have to read the same lines over and over.”

“but if I've learned anything, it's that we don't know half of what we think we do. And we know ourselves least of all.”

“...what's morally right is considered wrong...and what's morally wrong, you can get away with.”

“Where is the line? We're taught to stand up for ourselves; we're taught to stand up for others we care about. But all of a sudden, there's a new line drawn by the law. You sit back, it says, and let us deal with this.”

“There had to have been a moment where they made a conscious decision to turn away before they saw something they didn't want to.”

“I have met convicted child molesters before. They don't waer badges or brands or tattoos announcing their vice. It's hidden under a soft, grandfatherly smile; it's tucked in the pocket of a buttoned down shirt. They look the rest of us, and that's what makes it so frightening - to know that these beasts move among us, and we are none the wisest.They have girlfriends and wives who have loved them, unaware.”

“...because he believed that if you wanted to get rid of a hole, you filled it. He had not realized at the time that there were all sorts of filler that took up space, but had no substance. That made you feel just as empty.”

“What would you like to be?" Nina asks.Nathaniel tosses his magical tablecloth. "A superhero," he says. "A new one."Caleb is sure they could muster up Superman on short notice. "What's wrong with the old ones?"Everything it turns out. Nathaniel doesn't like Superman because he can be felled by Kryptonite. Green Lantern's ring doesn't work on anything yellow. The Incredible Hulk is too stupid. Even Captain Marvel runs the risk of being tricked into saying the word Shazam! and turning himself back into young Billy Batson."How about Ironman?" Caleb suggests.Nathaniel shakes his head. "He could rust.""Aquaman?""Needs water.""Nathaniel," Nina says gently, "nobody's perfect.""But they are supposed to be." Nathaniel explains, an d Caleb understands. Tonight, Nathaniel needs to be invincible.”

“I know every line of his face. The one that was carved the first year of our marriage, by laughing so often. The one that was born of worries the year he left the contracting companies to go into business for himself. The one developed from focusing hard on Nathaniel as he took his first steps, said his first words.”

“We had been naive enough to believe that we were invincible; that we could run blind through the hairpin turns of life at treacherous speeds and never crash.”

“I don't know what I was thinking, coming out here. There are no silver bullets in life, there's just the long, messy climb out of the pit you've dug youself.”

“The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night--because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law.”

“A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead.”

“When the door opens, I realize that the only thing worse than waiting is the moment you realize a decision has been made.”

“There are a lot of places," I reply, "that I thought I'd never go.”

“A level of a house, his father has told him, is called a story. Nathaniel likes that. It makes him feel like maybe he is living between the covers of a book himself. Like maybe everyone in every home is sure to get a happy ending.”

“What I mean is that those thoughts, they're human. And just because you turn out differently than everyone's imagined you would doesn't mean that you've failed in some way. A kid who gets teased in one school might move to a different one, and be the most popular girl there, just because no one has any other expectations of her. Or a person who goes to med school because his entire family is full of doctors might find out that what he really wants to be is an artist instead.”

“Is Understatement 101 a course in medical school?""Of course. It's the prereq for Lying Through One's Teeth.”

“You cannot be doomed, after all, as long as you can still see the faint outline of hope on the opposite shore.”

“You will ask yourself How come; you will ask yourself What if.”

“Just so you know: if this ever happens to you, you will not be ready.”

“ Where is this going to take me? she had asked. And Caleb's answer: Where do you want it to?”

“She isn't the girl who used to live next door, hasn't been for years. Back then she had freckles and jeans with holes at the knees and a ponytail yanked so tight it made her eyes pull at the corners. Now she wears pantyhose and tailored suits; she has had the same short bob hairstyle for five years. But when Patrick gets close enough, she still smells like childhood to him.”

“After years of seeing the world in absolutes, he has taught me how to pick out all the shades of possibilities.”

“Can you see the pond?"From up here, I can. It is a piece of sky, lying on the ground. When Heaven breaks, who fixes it?”

“ Change your point of view, and the perspective is completely different.”

“Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you invert the equation - expectation divided by reality - you didn't get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope.”

“Stupid English.""English isn't stupid," I say."Well, my English teacher is." He makes a face. "Mr. Franklin assigned an essay about our favorite subject, and I wanted to write about lunch, but he won't let me.""Why not?""He says lunch isn't a subject."I glance at him. "It isn't.""Well," Jacob says, "it's not a predicate, either. Shouldn't he know that?”

“She has never been a pretty crier. She sobbed the way she did everything else - with passion and excess. That she had managed to keep it inside her this long was astounding to James. He thought of pushing open the half-closed door and kneeling before his wife, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and helping her upstairs. He raised his hand, stroking the wood of the door, planning to say something to calm her. But what wisdom could he offer Gus, when he could not even heed it himself? James walked upstairs again, got into bed, covered his head with a pillow. And hours later, when Gus crept beneath the sheets, he tried to pretend that he did not feel the weight of her grief, lying between them like a fitful child, so solid that he could not reach past it to touch her.”

“I know that there will be other women, but they couldn't compare. Maybe I'll change, maybe love will change, but I think we were a once-in-a-lifetime. You could never leave me; that's why I am not more upset. You can't possibly break these feelings. They stretch, and they last.”

“I believe in love. I think it just hits you and pulls the rug out from underneath you and, like a baby, demands your attention every minute of the day.”

“Cara: I used to believe everything my brother told me, because he was older and I figured he knew more about the world. But as it turns out, being a grown-up doesn't mean you're fearless. It just means you fear different things.”

“Edward: You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal? he used to say to me. A plan.”

“You know, he told me once, completely exasperated, you've got one glass of water inside your head, with all the tears for a lifetime. If you waste them over nothing, then you won't be able to cry for real when you need to.”

“She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before. And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving. I have loved before, but it didn't feel like this.I have kissed before, but it didn't burn me alive. Maybe it lasts a minute, and maybe it's an hour. All I know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against mine, and that even if I did not know it until now, I have been waiting for this person forever.”

“Prayer is like water - something you can't imagine has the strength or power to do any good, and yet give it time and it can change the lay of the land.”

“The only difference between a wish and a prayer is that you're at the mercy of the universe for the first, and you've got some help with the second.”

“There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations”

“Doctors put a wall up between themselves and their patients; nurses broke it down.”