Jodi picoult quotes

if you tell yourself you feel fine, you will.

Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest - learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth.

Your hand fits mine like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle

I know what love is. When you find the person you are supposed to love, bells ring and fireworks go off in your head and you can't find the words to speak and you think about him all the time. When you find the person you are supposed to love, you will know by staring deeply into their eyes.

That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much?

She became whoever she needed to be to survive,but she never let anyone else define her.

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.

When I was little I bragged about my firefighting father: my father would go to heaven, because if he went to hell he would put out all the fires.

It never failed to amaze me how the most ordinary day could be catapulted into the extraordinary in the blink of an eye.

the letters are mixed up. U and I should be together.

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under the chalk, the ground that buildings rise, and the oxygen in the air. It is the place you come back to, no matter where your headed

The thing that most people didn't understand, if they weren't in his line if work, was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone forever. The difference was that the rape victim still had to go through the motions of being alive.

Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.

You can touch everything and be connected to nothing.

My chest feels full of glitter and helium, the way it used to when I was little and riding my father's shoulders at twilight, when I knew that if I held up my hands and spread my fingers like a net, I could catch the coming stars.

No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back.

There is no one truth. There’s only what happened, based on how you perceive it.

I don't know what it is about death that makes it so hard. I suppose it's the one-sided communication; the fact that we never get to ask our loved one if she suffered, if she is happy wherever she is now...if she is somewhere. It's the question mark that comes with death that we can't face, not the period.

I’d much rather pretend I’m somewhere else, and any time I open the pages of a book, that happens.

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

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.

Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once you get God on board.

I think once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer.

And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt.

Writing is grunt work - you need to have self-motivation, perseverance, and faith... talent is the smallest part of it.

Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.

They say that there are moments that open up your life like a walnut cracked, that change your point of view so that you never look at things the same way again.

It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.

Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall.

Things that break - be they bones, hearts, or promises - can be put back together but will never really be whole.

People work too hard to figure out the meaning of their lives. Why me, why now. The truth is, sometimes things don't happen to you for a reason. Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time for someone else.

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.

It seems to me that no matter what religion you subscribe to, acts of kindness are the stepping-stones to making the world a better place--because we become better people in it.

Logical thinking keeps you from wasting time worrying, or hoping. It prevents disappointment. Imagination, on the other hand, only gets you hyped up over things that will never realistically happen.

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.

If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?

My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall.

There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.

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

You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal?... A plan.

I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room-but eventually, you learn to live with it.

The optimist in me wants to believe sexuality will eventually become like handwriting: there’s no right way and wrong way to do it. We’re all just wired differently. It's also worth noting that when you meet someone, you never bother to ask if he’s right or left-handed. After all: does it really matter to anyone other than the person holding the pen?

The first person you fell in love with stole your heart. The first person you made love with stole your soul. And if these were one and the same, you were doomed.

Mistakes are like the memories you hide in an attic: old love letters from relationships that tanked, photos of dead relatives, toys from a childhood you miss. Out of sight is out of mind, but somewhere deep inside you know they still exist. And you also know that you're avoiding them.

I wonder if, as you get older, you stop missing people so fiercely. Maybe growing up is just focusing on what you've got, instead of what you don't.

One person's trauma is another's loss of innocence.

Every life has a soundtrack.

Even the most beautiful things can be toxic.

In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who loses a child.

What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.

There are millions of people in the world, and the spirits will see that most of them you never have to meet. But there are one or two you are tied to, and the spirits will cross you back and forth, threading so many knots until they catch and you finally get it right.

Happiness is what you choose to remember.

People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more.

Here are the things I know for sure: When you think you're right, you are most likely wrong. Things that break - be they bones, hearts, or promises - can be put back together but will never really be whole. And, in spite of what I said, you can miss a person you've never known. I learn this over and over again.

When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one.

The right idea is the one you can't stop thinking about; the one that's in your head first thing in the morning.

Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions.

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.

I don’t think anyone who falls in love has a choice. You’re just pulled to that person like true north, whether it’s good for you or bound to break your heart.

I think that ordinary people who are placed in extraordinary circumstances find themselves pushed beyond their limits, and learn new truths about themselves.

Close a door, and you'd still feel a breeze through the window.

If words had flavors, hers would be bitter almonds and coffee grounds.

Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. 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.

In fairytales, when the mask came off, the handsome prince still loved the girl, no matter what -and that alone would turn her into a princess.

Music therapy, to me, is music performance without the ego. It's not about entertainment as much as its about empathizing. If you can use music to slip past the pain and gather insight into the workings of someone else's mind, you can begin to fix a problem.

I woke up one morning thinking about wolves and realized that wolf packs function as families. Everyone has a role, and if you act within the parameters of your role, the whole pack succeeds, and when that falls apart, so does the pack.

The world just feels different for those of us who come alive after dark. It's more fragile and unreal, a replica of the one everyone else inhabits.

If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?

The more you get past pain, the more it goes from coal to diamond.

To say there had been a loss was ludicrous; one lost a shoe or a set of keys. You did not suffer the death of a child and say there was a loss. There was a catastrophe. A devastation. A hell.

Three months ago, if you asked me, I would have told you that if you really loved someone, you’d let them go. But now I look at you, and I dreamed about Maggie, and I see that I’ve been wrong. If you really love someone, Allie, I think you have to take them back.

When the news you don't want to hear is looming before you like Everest, two things can happen. Tragedy can run you through like a sword, or it can become your backbone. Either you fall apart and sob, or you say, 'Right. What's next?

Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.

A photo says, you were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, you were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.

Someone real," I hear myself saying. "Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who's smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to a symphony and start to cry, because he understands music can be too big for words. Someone who knows me better than I know myself. Someone I want to talk to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone I feel like I've known my whole life, even if I haven't.

Ross held her face between his hands and kissed her. He tasted doubt on her tongue and pain on the roof of her mouth. He swallowed these, and drank again. Consumed, she had no choice but to see how empty he was inside, and how, sip by sip, she filled him.

This is what I like about photographs. They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect.

Life sometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it.

You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.

When you finally start to write something, do not let yourself stop...even when you are convinced it's the worst garbage ever. This is the biggest caveat for beginning writers. Instead, force yourself to finish what you began, and THEN go back and edit it.

Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.

When you are attracted to people, it's because of the details. Their kindness. Their eyes. The fact that they can get you to laugh when you need it the most.

I'm grateful for my children, who are slowly emerging to become their own wonderful, interesting, compassionate young adults - which makes me believe that along the way I must have done something right.

Everyone has a story; everyone hides his past as a means of self-preservation. Some just do it better, and more thoroughly, than others.

true love is felonious… You take someone’s breath away… You rob them of the ability to utter a single word… You steal a heart.

If you were drifting with a thousand other people, could you really still say you were lost?

Here's a news flash for the ladies: for every one of you who thinks we all want a girl like Angelina Jolie, all skinny elbows and angles, the truth is, we'd rather curl up with someone like Charlotte - a woman who's soft when a guy wraps his arms around her; a woman who might have a smear of flour on her shirt the whole day and not notice or care, not even when she goes out to meet with the PTA; a woman who doesn't feel like an exotic vacation but is the home we can't wait to come back to.

You can't look back - you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.

Although you hadn't asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer.

The ability to find sparks may be buried so deep in you that you stop believing there's a God. Until someone comes along, with so much light in her that you can't help but see your own, and when you're together,that light grows even brighter.

words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.

Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood - finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without.

I was starting to see that what looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.

Real mothers don't just listen with humble embarrassment to the elderly lady who offers unsolicited advice in the checkout line when a child is throwing a tantrum. We take the child, dump him in the lady's cart, and say, "Great. Maybe you can do a better job." Real mothers know that it's okay to eat cold pizza for breakfast. Real mothers admit it is easier to fail at this job than to succeed.

Beliefs are the roads we take to our dreams. Believe you can do something-or believe you can't-and you'll be right everytime.

I believe that having something to hope for - even if it's just a better tomorrow- is the most powerful drug on this planet.

Tradionally, parents made decisions for a child, because presumably they are looking out for his or her best interests. But if they are blinded, instead, by the best interests of another one of their children, the system breaks down.

Sometimes I think the human heart is just a simple shelf. There is only so much you can pile onto it before something falls off an edge and you are left to pick up the pieces.

There's always going to be bad stuff out there. But here's the amazing thing -- light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into the light.

Researching 'Lone Wolf,' I was amazed at how thoughtful and intelligent these animals are. There has never been a documented attack against a human by a wolf that wasn't provoked by the human.

Doing the right thing for someone else occasionally means doing something that feels wrong to you.

Life can change in an instant; don't be so worried about the future that you forget to celebrate what you have right now.

The wolves knew when it was time to stop looking for what they'd lost, to focus instead on what was yet to come.

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

Love is not a because, it's a no matter what.

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

Like a missing tooth, sometimes an absence is more noticeable than a presence.

If you choose to be looking for something, you'd better be ready for whatever it is you are find. Because it may not be what you've been expecting.

What I want, more than anything, is to turn back time a little. To become the kid I used to be, who believed whatever my mother said was one hundred percent true and right without looking hard enough to see the hairline crack.

But you could only remake your own future, not anyone else's, and for some people that just wasn't good enough.

We all know that a sky with clouds in it is much more interesting than one that doesn’t have any.

There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.

Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.

It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened when you let yourself get close to someone, when you started to believe they loved you: you'd be disappointed. Depend on someone, and you might as well admit you're going to be crushed, because when you really needed them, they wouldn't be there. Either that, or you'd confide in them and you added to their problems. All you ever really had was yourself, and that sort of sucked if you were less than reliable.

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.

Religion isn't in your DNA. you don't believe just because your parents believe.

How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?

Where you come from does matter -- but not nearly as much as where you are headed.

The truth doesn't always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatley wrapped lies

She's not classically beautiful, but somehow that only makes her more interesting.

When was the last time someone read aloud to you? Probably when you were a child, and if you think back, you'll remember how safe you felt, tucked under the covers, or curled in someone's arms, as a story was spun around you like a web.

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

Someone once told me that when you give birth to a daughter, you've just met the person whose hand you'll be holding the day you die.