Jodi Picoult Quotes

I would prove to you that being different isn't a death sentence but a call to arms. ~ Jodi Picoult

Even though I don't write about things that come from my life because I'm lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that's really what being a writer is, probably. ~ Jodi Picoult

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

When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance. ~ Jodi Picoult

I want to believe there's a God. Because I sure as hell know there's a devil. ~ Jodi Picoult

You could only save someone who wanted to be saved; otherwise, you'd be dragged down for the count too. ~ Jodi Picoult

Forgiveness is spiritual. Punishment is legal," Leo says. "They're not mutually exclusive. ~ Jodi Picoult

There's this weird part about having kids - you know when your family is finished, and when it's not. ~ Jodi Picoult

She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be someone else. ~ Jodi Picoult

You have to understand – there is a romance to Africa. You can see a sunset and believe you have witnessed the hand of God. You watch the slow lope of a lioness and forget to breathe. You marvel at the tripod of a giraffe bent to water. In Africa, there are iridescent blues on the wings of birds that you do not see anywhere else in nature. In Africa, in the midday heat, you can see blisters in the atmosphere. When you are in Africa, you feel primordial, rocked in the cradle of the world. ~ Jodi Picoult

The arms of his swim team sweatshirt still wrapped around the pillow on the bed - Em had said it smelled of him. ~ Jodi Picoult

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? ~ Jodi Picoult

It's disappointing to know that someone can see right through you. ~ Jodi Picoult

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. ~ Jodi Picoult

I thought of all the magazine article I'd read on mothers who worked and constantly felt guilty about leaving their children with someone else. I had trained myself to read pieces like that and silently say to myself, 'See how lucky you are?' But it had been gnawing at the inside, that part that didn't fit, that I never let myself even think about. After all, wasn't it a worse kind of guilt to be with your child and to know that you wanted to be anywhere but there? ~ Jodi Picoult

Certainly I know better than most that circumstances can turn you into someone you've never been before. ~ Jodi Picoult

REACH FOR THE STARS! ~ Jodi Picoult

I would like to tell her all about Josef, but she already dismissed me once when I tried to confide in her. It is like he said: we believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist. Mary can't accept the thought that Josef Weber might be a monster, because that implies that she was duped by him. ~ Jodi Picoult

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. ~ Jodi Picoult

But that's what love is, isn't it? When it hurts you more to see someone suffer than it does to take the pain away? ~ Jodi Picoult

He has a reptile dysfunction. ~ Jodi Picoult

She felt a cage coming down around her; too late she realized that he had her trapped by the heart. And like any unwilling animal that was well and truly caught, she could escape only by leaving a piece of herself behind. ~ Jodi Picoult

I think about Ruth walking down the street on East End and wonder how many other residents questioned what she was doing there, even if they never said it to her face. How incredibly easy it is to hide behind white skin, I think, looking at these probable supremacists. The benefit of the doubt is in your favor. You're not suspicious. ~ Jodi Picoult

She knew how you went about falling in love; she did not know how you went about falling into trust. ~ Jodi Picoult

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. ~ Jodi Picoult

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

What I really want to tell him is to pick up that baby of his and hold her tight, to set the moon on the edge of her crib and to hang her name up in the stars. ~ Jodi Picoult

I may not have much say here, but I still can make the choice to not be a victim. The whole point of this examination is to make me feel lesser than, like an animal. To make me ashamed of my nakedness. But I have spent twenty years seeing how beautiful women are - not because of how they look, but because of what their bodies can withstand. So ~ Jodi Picoult

The only person he told about his hunch was Monroe. He and Monroe had grown up together in Dorchester, playing in the streets when the summer made the asphalt breathe and their laughter bounced ~ Jodi Picoult

When this is over ... we will got to the rainforest, or a beach as white as bone. We will eat grapes from the vine, we will swim with sea turtles, we will walk miles on cobblestone streets. We will laugh and talk and confess. We will. ~ Jodi Picoult

I'd try to stuff myself into one of these scenarios, but it's like wearing a size five sneaker when your foot is a seven
you can get by for a few steps, and then you sit down and pull off the shoe because it just plain hurts too much. ~ Jodi Picoult

Corinne is one of those people for whom life is just the space between crises. ~ Jodi Picoult

How do you do it?"
"Do what?"
"All of it. You know. Go to class and practice. Make it through the day. Act like ... like none if it mattered."
Jason swore beneath his breath and pulled the car over. Then he reached across the seat and brushed his thumb over her cheek; until then, she hadn't been aware she was crying. "Trix," he sighed, "it mattered. ~ Jodi Picoult

What's beautiful, grey and wears glass slippers? Cinderelephant. Why are elephants wrinkled? They don't fit on the ironing board. How do you get down from an elephant? You don't. You get down from a goose. Why do elephants have trunks? Because they'd look funny with a glove compartments ~ Jodi Picoult

Leave it to a man to mess things up ~ Jodi Picoult

When I think about writers who use fiction as social commentary and to raise social awareness but who are also very popular, I think of Dickens. ~ Jodi Picoult

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

San Antonio is the patron saint of things that have gone missing. ~ Jodi Picoult

Don't do any intentional harm to yourself or anyone else, and get happy. ~ Jodi Picoult

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. ~ Jodi Picoult

Accidents did not just happen. From time to time they were carefully plotted, calculated, and arranged to one's advantage-all, of course, under the cloak of happenstance. ~ Jodi Picoult

It was possible to grow up in an instant, that you could look down and see the line in the sand dividing your life now from what it used to be. ~ Jodi Picoult

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. ~ Jodi Picoult

Biblical justice was antiquated, or so she had taught. You couldn't hack off the hand of a thief; you couldn't stone a murderer to death. A more advanced society took care of its justice in a courtroom - something Laura had advocated until about five years ago. A trial might be more civilized, but emotionally, it couldn't possibly pack as much satisfaction. ~ Jodi Picoult

It's just like nurses in a hospital tend to know more than the doctors most of the time; if you really want to get the answers to a question about court, you should spend more time buttering up the clerks than the judges. ~ Jodi Picoult

No matter what we survivors like to tell ourselves about the afterlife, when someone dies, everything is over. ~ Jodi Picoult

He would wonder how much a man could take before he reduced himself to nothing. He ~ Jodi Picoult

Love meant jumping off a cliff and trusting that a certain person would be there to catch you at the bottom. ~ Jodi Picoult

So what have I learned that is helpful? Well, if you are white, like I am, you can't get rid of the privilege you have, but you can use it for good. Don't say I don't even notice race! like it's a positive thing. Instead, recognize that differences between people make it harder for some to cross a finish line, and create fair paths to success for everyone that accommodate those differences. Educate yourself. If you think someone's voice is being ignored, tell others to listen. If your friend makes a racist joke, call him out on it, instead of just going along with it. If the two former skinheads I met can have such a complete change of heart, I feel confident that ordinary people can, too. ~ Jodi Picoult

I walk towards the car but on second thought step back to the railing for a final look. Enormous. Anonymous. I could hurtle myself down the walls of this chasm, and never be found. ~ Jodi Picoult

After sticking out life, I hope it's whatever you want it to be. ~ Jodi Picoult

If you never go out on that limb, you're missing a hell of a view. ~ Jodi Picoult

Sometimes there aren't words. The silence between us is flung wide as an ocean. But I manage to reach across it, to wrap my arms around him. ~ Jodi Picoult

You may be real, but you're still stuck in a book. ~ Jodi Picoult

That's because racism isn't just about hate. We all have biases, even if don't think we do. It's because racism is also about who has power…and who has access to it. ~ Jodi Picoult

When someone loves you up one side and down the other like that, you make every effort to stick around. ~ Jodi Picoult

Repeat the same action over and over again, and eventually it will feel right. Eventually, there isn't even any guilt. ~ Jodi Picoult

[Jules] slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. "Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we're out of purgatory for the weekend."
"Maybe later," I murmur, still distracted by the day's previous events.
"So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested."
"Huh?" I say. ~ Jodi Picoult

For just a heartbeat I picture the life I could've had if I'd joined a sterile corporate law firm on the partner track. I imagined meeting my clients in paneled wood conference rooms instead of re-purposed storage closets that smell like bleach and pee. I imagine shaking the hand of a client whose hand isn't trembling from meth withdrawal or abject terror at a justice system he doesn't trust. ~ Jodi Picoult

Can you hate someone for what they have done, but still love them for whom they had been? ~ Jodi Picoult

Somewhere along the line, organized religion stopped being about faith, and started being about who had the power to keep the faith. You said that the purpose of religion was to bring people together. But does it, really? Or does it-knowingly, purposefully, and intentionally
break them apart? ~ Jodi Picoult

If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me. ~ Jodi Picoult

Have you ever really held the hand of someone you love? Not just in passing, a loose link between you - but truly clasped, with the pulses of your wrists beating together and your fingers mapping the knuckles and nails like a cartographer learning a country by heart? ~ Jodi Picoult

I have a sister, so I know-that relationship, it's all about fairness: you want your sibling to have exactly what you have-the same amount of toys, the same number of meatballs on your spaghetti, the same share of love. But being a mother is completely different. You want your child to have more than you ever did. You want to build a fire underneath her and watch her soar. It's bigger than words. ~ Jodi Picoult

Raw love, like raw heartache, could blindside you. ~ Jodi Picoult

Where did you go?"
"To the end of the driveway," my mother says. "I was nine months pregnant; that was the maximum distance I could waddle without feeling as if my uterus was falling out."
I wince. "Do you have to be quite so graphic?"
"What would you like me to call it, Zoe? A fetal living room? ~ Jodi Picoult

What if we did get so lucky that we're due for something terrible? ~ Jodi Picoult

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. ~ Jodi Picoult

It's quite difficult to know who owns a story. Is it the writer, who crafted it? The characters, who carry the plot forward? Or you, the reader, who breathes life into them? Or perhaps none of the three can exist without the other. Perhaps without this magical combination, a story would be nothing more than words on a page. ~ Jodi Picoult

It was a hell of a lot easier to be silent and overlooked than to be constantly shut down. ~ Jodi Picoult

[I] don't think I was trying to kill myself. I just wanted to hurt, and understand exactly whay I was hurting. This made sense: you cut, you felt pain, period. ~ Jodi Picoult

It was nice not having to be the one in control, for a little while. It was nice to be the one who was protected, instead of the one who'd been protecting eveyone else. ~ Jodi Picoult

It's crazy to look at [my baby], flesh and blood, and know that [my husband] and I were able to build something real and solid out of a material as blurry and intangible as love. ~ Jodi Picoult

It's the way he gets noticed, you know? I mean, imagine what it would be like if you were a squirrel living in the elephant cage at the zoo. Does anyone ever go there and say, Hey check out that squirrel? No, because there's something so much bigger you notice first. ~ Jodi Picoult

The feeling that she was going to explode, that she was too big for her own skin. ~ Jodi Picoult

Anna is the only proof I have that I was born into this family. Instead of dropped off on the doorstep by some Bonnie and Clyde couple that ran off into the night. On the surface, we're polar opposites. Under the skin, though, we're the same: people think they know what they're getting, and they're always wrong. (Jesse) ~ Jodi Picoult

How come I believe in God? I guess its's because some things are too incredible for people to take all the credit. (pg. 350) ~ Jodi Picoult

It's true that when it's time to go, someone will be waiting for you. It might be a relative or a loved one, but not always. It could be a dog, hanging out with a tennis ball and ready to play again. Sometimes, when children die, they don't know any of their relatives who are on the other side, so they'll have an angel or even maybe a cartoon character or Santa Claus waiting to pull them across that bridge. It's just a manifestation of energy saying, "Come on, baby, it's okay. ~ Jodi Picoult

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? ~ Jodi Picoult

Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength - and the honesty - to break them down. ~ Jodi Picoult

Go fuck yourself Judge."
"Motion denied." answers the judge dryly. ~ Jodi Picoult

There were entire days where I did nothing but cry; others where I felt like I'd swallowed a lead plate; some more where I worked really hard at going through the motions of getting dressed and making my bed and studying my vocab words because it was easier than doing anything else. ~ Jodi Picoult

Love's the strongest energy. Katie and I loved each other. We couldn't love each other in my world, and we couldn't love each other in her world. But all that love, all that energy, it had to go somewhere. It went into that baby." His voice broke. "Even if we couldn't have each other, we would have both had him." -Adam, Plain Truth ~ Jodi Picoult

I suppose there's only so many times you can take being rebuffed before you need some validation. ~ Jodi Picoult

A woman is at the funeral of her mother. There, she meets a man she doesn't know and has never met, who she thinks is her dream partner. But because of the circumstances, she forgets to ask for his number, and she can't find him afterward. A few days later, she kills her own sister. Why? ~ Jodi Picoult

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. ~ Jodi Picoult

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

But you remind me so much of her."
"I-I do?"
"Yes." Addie gifted him with a smile."Because I love you both. ~ Jodi Picoult

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. ~ Jodi Picoult

The only way someone can leave you is if you let them. ~ Jodi Picoult

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. ~ Jodi Picoult

Don't say it. don't tell me that nobody's going to stare at me, because they will. don't tell me it doesn't matter, because it does. and don't tell me i look fine because that's a lie. ~ Jodi Picoult

All the universe wants from us is two things: Don't do any intentional harm to yourself or anyone else, and get happy. They told me humans make it more complicated than it needs to be. I thought for sure they were feeding me a line. I mean, there's got to be more to it than that. But if there is, i guess i'm not supposed to know it yet ~ Jodi Picoult

Your sister," I say evenly, "is incredibly sick. I'm sorry if that interferes with your dentist's appointment or your plan to go buy a pair of cleats. But those don't rate quite as high in the grand scheme of things right now. I'd think that since you're ten, you might be able to grow up enough to realize that the whole world doesn't always revolve around you."
Jesse looks out the window, where Kate straddles the arm of an oak tree, coaching Anna in how to climb up. "Yeah, right, she's sick," he says. "Why don't you grow up? Why don't you figure out that the world doesn't revolve around her?"
...
There is a scuffle on the other side of the door, and then it swings open. Blood covers Jesse's mouth, a vampire's lipstick; bits of wire stick out like a seamstress's pins. I notice the fork he is holding, and realize this is what he used to pull off his braces.
"Now you never have to take me anywhere," he says. ~ Jodi Picoult

Danger came in different packages, at different points in a lifetime. ~ Jodi Picoult

Some people don't know what to do with an act of kindness. ~ Jodi Picoult

Someone's enterprising idea of therapy is another person's frustrated hell. ~ Jodi Picoult

We are never the people we think we are. We are the ones we pretend, with all our hearts we can't become. ~ Jodi Picoult

Sometimes the hardest thing to hear is the truth. ~ Jodi Picoult

The best place to cry is on a mother's arms. ~ Jodi Picoult