Top 100 Picoult's Quotes
#1. It never failed to amaze Alex how, with the brush of a hand, the
track of someone's life might veer in a completely different direction.
Jodi Picoult
#2. Kate is going to die. It took me a long time to be able to say that. We all are going to die, when you get down to it, but it's not supposed to be like this. Kate ought to be the one saying goodbye to me.
Jodi Picoult
#3. It was one thing to sacrifice your own life for someone else's. It was another thing entirely to bring into the mix a third party - a third party who knew you, who trusted you implicitly.
Jodi Picoult
#4. Everyone omes with a label, it's up to you to peel it off. pg.155 Vanishing Acts
Jodi Picoult
#5. It's been a long time," I reply, when what I really want to do is ask her what she's been doing for the past fifteen years. If she still drinks tea with milk and lemon. If she's happy.
Jodi Picoult
#6. I bet you feel uncomfortable right now. You know, so do I. It's hard to talk about this stuff without offending people, or feeling offended.
Jodi Picoult
#7. I felt a splinter of guilt wedge into my heart. Charlotte had hurt me; in return, I'd hurt Rob. Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late we've wounded the people we're trying to protect.
Jodi Picoult
#8. The problem isn't with rock lyrics, it's
with the fabric of this society itself.
Jodi Picoult
#9. If there's something as good as [him] in my life, I'm going to pay for it.
Jodi Picoult
#10. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#11. It doesn't matter what it is that leaves a hole inside you. It just matters that it's there.
Jodi Picoult
#12. I can give or take elephants; I never can find the cheetah-but the zebras captivate me. They'd be one of the few things that would fit if we were lucky enough to live in a world that's black or white.
Jodi Picoult
#13. But even if every house looked identical-if all the furnishings were the same- it still wouldn't feel like yours.
That's because home isn't where you are. It's who you're with.
Jodi Picoult
#14. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#15. That's what love is. It's some power greater than you and me, that draws us to one special person
Jodi Picoult
#17. The jury is supposed to be twelve peers, but technically that would mean every single person on the jury should have Asperger's syndrome, because then they'd really understand me.
Jodi Picoult
#18. He doesn't look people in the eye. He says that's how someone can steal your soul.
Amen to that.
Jodi Picoult
#19. I realize then that we never have children, we receive them. And sometimes it's not for quite as long as we would have expected or hoped. But it is still far better than never having had those children at all.
Jodi Picoult
#20. You don't make peace only with God. You make it with people. Sin isn't global. It's personal. If you do wrong to someone, the only way to fix that is to go to that same person and do right by him.
Jodi Picoult
#21. Gay rights to me that is the last civil right that we have not granted in America and I think it's an enormous embarrassment.
Jodi Picoult
#22. You can't undo something that's happened; you can't take back a word that's already been said out loud.
Jodi Picoult
#23. You know someone's right for you when the things they don't have to say are even more important than the things they do.
Jodi Picoult
#24. It's hard to be the one always waiting. I mean, there's something to be said for the hero who charges off to battle, but when you get right down to it there's a whole story in who's left behind.
Jodi Picoult
#25. I'm sorry, I sobbed. I'm helpless.
That's where you're wrong, she told me. You're mot helpless. You need help. There's a big difference.
Jodi Picoult
#26. I pointed to the wound. "It's missing," I said.
My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. "Yes," she said. "But see how much of me is left?
Jodi Picoult
#28. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#29. I laugh. Sweetheart, save your piggy-bank change. If your dog's missing, put up flyers. If a guy dumped you for a hotter girl, stuff your bra and make him jealous. That advice, it's all free, by the way, 'cause that's how I roll.
Jodi Picoult
#30. Life could take on any number of shapes while you were busy fighting your own demons. But if you were changing at the same rate as the person beside you, nothing else really mattered. You became each other's constant.
Jodi Picoult
#31. In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.
Jodi Picoult
#32. Sometimes knowing what's right isn't a rational decision, or even what works on paper. Sometimes leaving is the best course of action after all.
Jodi Picoult
#33. I don't belong to a religion. Religion's the reason the world's falling apart ... " That's what religion does. It points a finger. It causes wars. It breaks apart countries. It's a petri dish for stereotypes to grow in. Religion's not about being holy," Shay said. "Just holier-than-thou.
Jodi Picoult
#34. But there's a part of me that wonders what it would be like to be the most important person to someone else, to always feel like you were missing a piece of yourself when he wasn't near you.
Jodi Picoult
#35. At seventeen, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else's thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone accept you was as vital as oxygen.
Jodi Picoult
#36. Memory isn't something that stays with you at all times. It's a quantity that gets summoned or evoked or brought to mind. It gets carried to an arena for our viewing pleasure. By definition, then, there are times it must go missing.
Jodi Picoult
#37. That was Ross's cue. During the investigation, he was responsible for setting up and monitoring the electromagnetic equipment, the digital video cameras, the infrared
Jodi Picoult
#38. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#39. I ... 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.
Jodi Picoult
#40. If you read a book that's fiction and you get caught in the characters and the plot, and swept away, really, by the fiction of it - by the non-reality - you sometimes wind up changing your reality as well. Often, when the last page is turned, it will haunt you.
Jodi Picoult
#41. People don't just disappear. There's always a reason, or an enemy with a grudge. There's always a loose thread that starts to unravel.
Jodi Picoult
#42. I don't believe in self-pity. I think it's for people who have too much time on their hands. Instead of dreaming of a miracle, you learn to make your own.
Jodi Picoult
#43. I've always been able to see you," I say. "It's a rather lovely view.
Jodi Picoult
#44. Keeping a secret isn't always lying. Sometimes it's the only way to protect the person you love.
Jodi Picoult
#46. The old man was cranky, bitter bastard, but it's the thorn in your side that leaves the biggest hole.
Jodi Picoult
#47. 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?
Jodi Picoult
#48. I think many of my books, including 'Handle with Care,' including 'My Sister's Keeper,' circle back to how far are we willing to go for the people we love? I think love changes the way we think. It's the thing that takes you out of what your normal set of beliefs would be.
Jodi Picoult
#49. She falls asleep this time holding my hand, Eric's diamond ring cutting into my palm like the wounds of Passion from the Crucifixion. I would do that for her, I realize. Die. Be reborn.
Jodi Picoult
#50. That's the crazy thing about lies. You start to fall for them, yourself.
Jodi Picoult
#51. She was making a conscious effort to take with her all the best things about the world she wanted to leave, just in case memories could be car-ried in one's pockets and used to plot out the course of whatever it was that came next
Jodi Picoult
#52. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#53. The hardest thing in the world is believing someone can change. It's always easier to go along with the way things are than to admit that you might have been wrong in the first place.
Jodi Picoult
#54. A woman isn't all that different from a bonfire. A fire's a beautiful thing, right? Something you can't take your eyes off, when it's burning. If you can keep it contained, it'll throw light and heat for you. It's only when it gets out of control that you have to go on the offensive.
Jodi Picoult
#55. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#56. Just so you know," I begin, "when they say 'Once upon a time' ... they're lying. It's not once upon a time. It's not even twice upon a time. It's hundreds of times, over and over, every time someone opens up the pages of this dusty old book.
Jodi Picoult
#57. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#58. It's like a telescope. My dad, no matter what he's doing, zooms right in so he can't see anything except what's right there with him at that minute. My mom, she's always on wide angle.
Jodi Picoult
#59. It is such a heady rush to be the object of someone's attention in a good way, not as a freak, that I keep forgetting to hide.
Jodi Picoult
#60. Something still exists as long as there's someone around to remember it.
Jodi Picoult
#61. It's times like this I am glad I don't look people in the eye. If I did, surely they would die on the spot from the contempt shooting out of mine.
Jodi Picoult
#62. Love is not an equation, as your father once wanted me to believe. It's not a contract, and it's not a happy ending. It is the slate under the chalk and the ground buildings rise from and the oxygen in the air. It is the place I come back to, no matter where I've been headed.
Jodi Picoult
#63. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#64. Dead isn't angels or ghosts. It's a physical state of breakdown, a change in all those carbon atoms that create the temporary house of a body
so that they can return to their most elemental stage.
Jodi Picoult
#65. I hadn't been thinking, actually. I was just trying to get to a place where I'd be noticed.
Jodi Picoult
#66. It's crazy, right? To love someone who's hurt you? It's even crazier to think that someone who hurts you loves you.
Jodi Picoult
#67. Every year I tell myself that I'm not going to read any reviews and then I do. We're all human and when I read something negative it hurts. I think when you write it's part of the game, you're going to get some good reviews and some bad reviews and that's how it goes. I don't write for the reviews.
Jodi Picoult
#68. You can have the best intentions, but the moment there's a hairline crack, it is only a matter of time before you go to pieces.
Jodi Picoult
#69. It is almost always impossible to get an abused child to admit who's abusing her.
Jodi Picoult
#70. Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs, tossing grass up to heaven - as a distraction, not a prayer. That's not humility you see on our long final journeys: it's procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down. - DAN CHIASSON, The Elephant
Jodi Picoult
#71. It's like picking up an unfamiliar piece of sheet music & starting to stumble through it, only to realize it is a melody you'd once learned by heart, one you can play without even trying.
Jodi Picoult
#72. The right idea is the one you can't stop thinking about; the one that's in your head first thing in the morning.
Jodi Picoult
#73. I know that books I have written will still resonate in 50 years - particularly 'My Sister's Keeper.' It has sold three million copies in the States alone. I strongly feel that, as a novelist, you have a platform and the ability to change people's minds.
Jodi Picoult
#74. A bruise is how the body remembers it's been wronged.
Jodi Picoult
#75. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#77. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#78. What it's like being the balloon, when someone lets go of the string. Kennedy
Jodi Picoult
#79. Being a teenager isn't all that different from being part of someone else's story. There's always someone who thinks they know better than you do
Jodi Picoult
#80. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#81. The last cell in the row, whispering a prayer beneath her breath, a prisoner spat, the small splat landing just beside Katie's sneaker. In the exercise yard, Duvall grew chatty. Haven't seen you around. You been
Jodi Picoult
#83. Or. I hate that word. It's two letters long and stuffed to the gills with reasonable doubt.
Jodi Picoult
#84. Yet I, too, know how hard it is to peel back the veneer of your life, and to peek at the real. It's like
Jodi Picoult
#85. If it's us", she whispered, "how come you get to decide?"
When he didn't answer - couldn't answer - she turned and stared out the front window. As it turned out, they were still in the parking lot.
They hadn't gotten anywhere at all.
Jodi Picoult
#86. That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?
Jodi Picoult
#87. McAfee, I could try this case in my sleep and still win."
"Guess that's your plan, then, since you're clearly dreaming.
Jodi Picoult
#88. I thought I knew this world. I thought I could control it. But just when you think you've got your life by the reins, that's when it's most likely to run away from you.
Jodi Picoult
#89. HIM: I should have known better than to fall for a scientist. Your idea of a Valentine's heart probably has an aorta. HER: Is it a crime to be biologically relevant? She
Jodi Picoult
#90. A wish is just words. Belief is the catalyst. It's what sets that wish into motion.
Jodi Picoult
#91. Where is this going to take me? she had asked. And Caleb's answer: Where do you want it to?
Jodi Picoult
#92. Just when you think you've got your life by the reins, that's when it's most likely to run away with you.
Jodi Picoult
#93. She shrugged. You can be happy for someone else's good fortune, but that doesn't mean you forget your own bad luck.
Jodi Picoult
#94. It turns out that there's something even harder than not being able to be with the person you love when you're happy: not being able to comfort her when she's sad.
Jodi Picoult
#95. Do you know what it's like to give your whole self to a person, and your whole heart to boot, until you've got nothing left to give-and then realize that it still isn't what they need?
Jodi Picoult
#96. Family's not a thing, it's a place,' Shay said softly. 'It's where all the memories get kept.
Jodi Picoult
#97. Couldn't change the brain I'd been born with, so instead I learned how to narrow the world with makeshift blinders, until all I noticed was what I wanted to notice. That's autism, for those who've never been there themselves.
Jodi Picoult
#98. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#99. 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.
Jodi Picoult
#100. That's what happens to dreams," Charlotte said. "Life gets in the way.
Jodi Picoult
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