Picoult Change Quotes & Sayings

Real fairy tales are not for the fainthearted. Children get eaten by witches and chased by wolves; women fall into comas and are tortured by evil relatives. Somehow all that pain and suffering is worthwhile, though, when it leads to the ending: happily ever after. Suddenly it no longer matters if you got a B- on your midterm in French or you're the only girl in the school who doesn't have a date for the spring formal. Happily ever after trumps everything. But what if ever after could change? — Jodi Picoult

It was that she truly believed you could be fourteen when you learned how love could change the speed your blood ran through you, how it made you dream in kaleidoscope color. It was that Trixie knew she couldn't have loved Jason this hard if he hadn't loved her that way too. — Jodi Picoult

You couldn't argue the facts; you could only change the lens through which you looked at them. — Jodi Picoult

The bottom line in both cases is that people don't change; that no matter how charming you are and how fiercely you love, you cannot turn a person into something she's not. — Jodi Picoult

I love the idea that a name might change based on who you are at a given moment in time.
Lia — Jodi Picoult

Change your point of view, and the perspective is completely different. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

If you had the chance, would you change what you did?"
We haven't rehearsed the answer, and maybe it's the only one that really matters. I turn, so that I am staring square at you; so that you know, all my life, anything I've ever said or buried beneath silence was just for you. "If I had the chance," I reply. "I'd do it all over again. — Jodi Picoult

Of all my novels, this book will stand out for me because of the sea change it inspired in the way I think about myself, and because it made me aware of the distance I have yet to go when it comes to racial awareness. — Jodi Picoult

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

A man should live his life a certain way not because of some divine authority, but because of a personal moral obligation to himself and others. — 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

If you don't want somwone to change your life for you, you've got to change it yourself. (Vanishing Acts, pg. 339) — Jodi Picoult

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

What she couldn't put into word was what had happened in between to change her from one person into the other — Jodi Picoult

Families were never what you wanted them to be. We all wanted what we couldn't have: the perfect child, the doting husband, the mother who wouldn't let go. We live in our grown-up dollhouses completely unaware that, at any moment, a hand might come in and change around everything we'd become accustomed to. — Jodi Picoult

People change, but only if you give them room to do it. — Jodi Picoult

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

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

You will ask me, after this, why, I didn't tell you this before. It is because I know how powerful a story can be. It can change the course of history. It can save a life. But it can also be a sinkhole, a quicksand in which you become stuck, unable to write yourself free. — Jodi Picoult

I smiled at him as best I could and pushed the paper across the table before he could change his mind. Because Henry DeVille was correct - there was an ingredient in my baking more concenctrated than any extract, more pungent than any spice; an ingredient that everyone would recognize and no one was able to name: it was regret, and it rose when one least expected. — Jodi Picoult

Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started. — Jodi Picoult

What if the puzzle of the world was a shape you didn't fit into? And the only way to survive was to mutilate yourself, carve away your corners, sand yourself down, modify yourself to fit? How come we haven't been able to change the puzzle instead? — Jodi Picoult

Pure logic suggests that if the entity in the coffin is not fundamentally the person you used to know, you cannot miss him. Because that's not a loss; that's a change. — Jodi Picoult

But as he grew older, he learned that a word was a powerful thing. An insult didn't have to be shouted to bleed; a vow didn't have to be whispered to make you believe. Hold a thought in your head, and that was enough to change the actions of anyone and anything that crossed your path. — Jodi Picoult

Someone who was happy
would have little need to hope for change. But, conversely, an optimistic person was that way
because he wanted to believe in something better than his reality.
He started wondering if there were exceptions to the rule: if happy people might be hopeful, if the
unhappy might have given up any anticipation that things might get better. — Jodi Picoult

That's what love is, when your hindsight is 20/20, and you still wouldn't change a thing. — Jodi Picoult

In reality, you don't ever change the hurricane. You just learn how to stay out of its path. — Jodi Picoult

So you tell me ... did this execution really make you feel safer? Did it bring us all closer together? Or did it drive us further apart? — Jodi Picoult

For me it's more important that I outline all the facets of a controversial issue and let the reader make up his or her mind. I don't care if readers change their minds, but I would like readers to ask themselves why their opinion is what it is. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

Zebras don't change their stripes, and war criminals don't repent. — Jodi Picoult

The best thing about endings is knowing that just ahead is the daunting task to start over. — Jodi Picoult

So you believe people can't change? That once you do a bad thing, you're a bad person?"
"I don't know," I admit."But I do think that some stains never wash out. — Jodi Picoult

I tell them that there is nothing more selfish than trying to change someone's mind because they don't think like you. Just because something is different does not mean it should not be respected. I — Jodi Picoult

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

You know how hind-sight is 20/20? Love is when you look back and wouldn't change anything. — Jodi Picoult

By now you've already formed your own impression. you believe that an act committed a lifetime ago defines a man, or you believe that a person's past has nothing to do with his future. you think i am either a hero, or a monster. maybe knowning more about circumstances will make you think differently about me, but it won't change what happened twenty-eight years ago. — Jodi Picoult

Change is a funny thing. We never are quite sure what we are becoming or even why. Then one day we look at ourselves and wonder who we are and how we got that way. Only one thing about change remains constant ... it is always painful — Jodi Picoult

There is a curious thing that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character ... Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl. — Jodi Picoult

It's certainly my honor to be able to, hopefully, change the world a tiny bit, one mind at a time. — Jodi Picoult

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

I have an iron lung, and the dog keeps me from getting too close to magnets.
[...]
I have SARS. He's tallying the people I infect.
[...]
I'm nearsighted. He helps me read the road signs.
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I'm a recovering alcoholic. The dog gets between me and a beer.
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I have an irregular heartbeat and he's CPR certified.
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Color-blind. He tells me when the traffic lights change.
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He translates for my Spanish-speaking clients.
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He's a chick magnet.
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I'm a lawyer. He chases ambulances for me. — Jodi Picoult

I write because it's a way of puzzling out answers to situations in the world that I don't understand. The act of writing a book gives me the same experience that I hope reading it gives readers. It forces me to sort through the various points of view on a given issue or situation and ultimately come to a conclusion. Doing that might not change my mind, but it almost always gives me a stronger sense of why my opinion is what it is - a question we rarely ask ourselves. — Jodi Picoult

Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't stand the thought of them changing? Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't see clearly? — Jodi Picoult

I've thought about all the things I could have done differently, and if it would have led to another outcome. But thinking doesn't change anything, does it? — Jodi Picoult

Some women are meant to change the world, while others are meant to hold it together. And then there are those of us who simply don't want to be in it, because we know no matter how much we struggle, we can't comfortably fit. — Jodi Picoult

In a fairy tale, the story can't be altered. The prince and princess will never have a fight. You'll never hear the queen raise her voice. No on ever gets sick; no one ever gets hurt. Maybe love is only safe in places where it can't change. — 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

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

You're a fixer, Grant mused. You're also a colossal pain in the ass. The thing is, it's the pains in the ass that change the world. — Jodi Picoult