Picoult Quotes & Sayings

Virgil takes a slightly mashed Twinkie from his pocket and sets this on the counter between us and Ralph. "How old is that?" I murmur. "These things have enough preservatives in them to keep them on the shelves until 2050," Virgil whispers. — 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. — Jodi Picoult

Identification is not the same as knowing someone through and through. — Jodi Picoult

What's the difference between spending your life trying to be invisible, or pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be? Either way, you're faking. — Jodi Picoult

There is no greater force on earth than a mother's revenge — Jodi Picoult

When you're hurting deeply, you go inward. — Jodi Picoult

When you are 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 lifet rying to figure out how to keep her close enough for for comfort. — Jodi Picoult

How could you not want to draw breath one more day? How could your own life be such a cheap commodity? But then I started to understand: when your existence is hell, death must be heaven. — Jodi Picoult

I believe in Hell ... but it's here on earth." He shakes his head. "Good people and bad people. As if it were this easy. Everyone is both of these at once. — Jodi Picoult

I'm not going to tell a person how to think, don't believe in that. What I want to do, when I write these books, is just to say don't be so sure of yourself. Let me pull the carpet out from underneath you, and let's see if you can still find the footing. — Jodi Picoult

The only person who suffers, when you squirrel alway all that hate, is you. — Jodi Picoult

Every holocaust starts with an ember. You just have to know what to look for. — Jodi Picoult

I didn't cry when she got on the plane. She lived with me for four years, and when she walked away, I didn't feel much of anything at all — Jodi Picoult

A sacrament
like marriage
means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you're modeling God. And God never gives up. — Jodi Picoult

It's the difference between dancing along the eggshell crust of acquaintance and diving into the messy center of a relationship. — 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

Only the liar knows that he's lying. — Jodi Picoult

How could you beat an enemy you couldn't see? — Jodi Picoult

Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut. — Jodi Picoult

She stared at Peter, and she realized that in that one moment, when she hadn't been thinking, she knew exactly what he'd felt as he moved through the school with his backpack and his guns. Every kid in this school played a role: jock, brain, beauty, freak. All Peter had done was what they all secretly dreamed of: be someone, even for just nineteen minutes, who nobody else was allowed to judge. — Jodi Picoult

I think you're the only person who gets me. When I'm with you, the world doesn't feel like a problem I can't figure out. Please come to the dance, because you're my music. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you. — Jodi Picoult

They were different places in that same relationship, and like anything that's out of alignment, they were destined to crash sooner or later. — 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

She is the person I ran to when I got my period; the one who helped me knit back together my first broken heart; the hand I would reach for in the middle of the night when I could no longer remember which side our father parted his hair on, or what it sounded like when our mother laughed. No matter what she is now, before all that, she was my built-in best friend. — Jodi Picoult

Is there any place on earth that smells better than a Laundromat? It's like a rainy Sunday when you don't have to get out from under your covers, or like lying back on the grass your father's just mowed--comfort food for your nose. — Jodi Picoult

I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.
Brian Fitzgerald, talking about his children. — Jodi Picoult

Since birds took flight, they were closer to the spirit world than man was, so ignoring a message from a bird might mean missing some warning or promise from powers greater than oneself. — Jodi Picoult

Suddenly a ragged man wearing a hairnet and flip-flops walks toward us, holding a stack of pamphlets. Sophie, scared, hides behind her mother's chair. "My brother," the vagrant asks me, "have you found the Lord Jesus Christ?"
"I didn't know he was looking for me."
"Is He your personal savior?"
"You know," I say, "I'm still kind of hoping to rescue myself."
"The man shakes his head, dreadlocks like snakes. "None of us are strong enough for that," he replies, and moves on. — Jodi Picoult

You might have to lose control before you could find out what you'd been missing. — Jodi Picoult

I believe everyone has spirit guides - but not everyone bothers to start a conversation with them. Spirit guides have lived as humans. They have a soul level that's very evolved and have learned a lot of life lessons. (That's the goal, you know - keep graduating to the next level, until you have a soul that is as pure as it can be.) — Jodi Picoult

You can argue that it's a different world now than the one when Matthew Shepard was killed, but there is a subtle difference between tolerance and acceptance. It's the distance between moving into the cul-de-sac and having your next door neighbor trust you to keep an eye on her preschool daughter for a few minutes while she runs out to the post office. It's the chasm between being invited to a colleague's wedding with your same-sex partner and being able to slow-dance without the other guests whispering. — 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

I think that when you live in a world with limits ... when you've met everyone and seem everything you're going to see - you lose the hope that something extraordinary will happen in your life — Jodi Picoult

I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing. — Jodi Picoult

Since I was five, I've known that I was adopted, which is a politically correct term for being clueless about one's own origins. — Jodi Picoult

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

The world is a place where the extraordinary can sit just beside the ordinary with the thinnest of boundaries; that even in environments inhospitable to man, all sort of entities might thrive. — Jodi Picoult

Many of my books come from what if questions that I can't answer, things that I'm worried about as either a woman, a wife, a mom, an American. — Jodi Picoult

Whether or not belive in Fate comes down to one thing: who you blame when something goes wrong. Do you think it's your fault - that if you'd tried better, worked harder, it wouldn't have happened? Or do you just chalk it up to circumstance?
I know poeple who'll hear about the people who died, and will say that it was God's will. I know people who'll say it was bad luck. And then there's my personal favorite: They were just in the wrong place at hte wrong time.
Then again, you could say the same thing about me, couldn't you? — Jodi Picoult

No child really chooses his religion; it is just the luck of the draw which blanket of beliefs you are wrapped in. — Jodi Picoult

I imagine the touch of someone who loves you so much, he cannot bear to watch you sleep; and so you wake up with his hand on your heart. — Jodi Picoult

Gay rights is not something most of us think about - because most of us happen to have been born straight. — Jodi Picoult

From time to time you'll see documentaries about low-ranked wolves who somehow rise to the top of the pack - an omega that earns a position as an alpha. Frankly, I don't buy it. I think that, in actuality, those documentary makers have misidentified the wolf in the first place. For example, an alpha personality, to the man on the street, is usually considered bold and take-charge and forceful. In the wolf world, though that describes the beta rank. Likewise, an omega wolf - a bottom-ranking, timid, nervous animal - can often be confused with a wolf who hangs behind the others, wary, protecting himself, trying to figure out the Big Picture.
Or in other words: There are no fairy tales in the wild, no Cinderella stories. The lowly wolf that seems to rise to the top of the pack was really an alpha all along. — Jodi Picoult

The weapons an author has at her disposal are flawed. There are words that feel shapeless and overused. Love, for example. I could write the word love a thousand times and it would mean a thousand different things to different readers. — Jodi Picoult

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

I think I have sort of gravitated toward issues that I don't know the answers to, because that's what's more interesting for me to write. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

If Daddy could see me now. I spent the morning with Rebecca at the Indianapolis Speedway, at an auto museum filled with Nascars and racing paraphernalia. Do you remember when we used to watch all five hundred laps with him, every year? I never understood what it was that made auto racing such a biggie for him - it's not like he ever tried the sport himself. He told me once when I was older that it was the absolute speed of it all. I liked to watch for crashes, like you. I liked the way there'd be a huge explosion on the track and billows of ebony smoke, and the other cars would just keep a straight course and head right for the spin, into this sort of black box, and they'd come out okay. I — Jodi Picoult

A duck walks into a bar and the bartender asks, what'll it be? The duck doesn't answer because it's a duck. — Jodi Picoult

She believed that unadulterated devotion had its share of protective power, as if love were a steel grinder that Fates could not snip through. She also believed that the moment you relaxed your guard, the moment you were anything less than ferocious in your keeping, that was the moment it could all be snatched away. — Jodi Picoult

When I was tiny, the county fair came through town. Our parents took us, and got tickets for the rides, even though I was scared to death of all of them. Edward was the one who convinced me to go on the merry-go-round. He put me up on one of the wooden horses and he told me the horse was magic, and might turn real right underneath me, but only if I didn't look down. So I didn't. I stared out at the pinwheeling crowd and searched for him. Even when I started to get dizzy or thought I might throw up, the circle would come around again and there he was. After a while, I stopped thinking about the horse being magic, or even how terrified I was, and instead, I made a game out of finding Edward.
I think that's what family feels like. A ride that takes you back to the same place over and over. — Jodi Picoult

Mistakes are something that happen by accident. You didn't walk out the door one morning and fall into some guy's bed. You thought about it, for a while. You made that choice. — Jodi Picoult

I'd do it all over again. — Jodi Picoult

When he smiles at me, I am lost — Jodi Picoult

I'm crying for all the things we lose that we cannot get back. — Jodi Picoult

People in the real world would kill for a happily ever after, and you're willing to just throw it away ?" I look away from her. "It's hardly a happily ever after when you wind up right at the beginning. — Jodi Picoult

I'm gonna miss you," Brianna says.
"I'm gonna miss you too, baby," Angelo murmurs.
For Pete's sake. It's not like she's leaving on a trip
around the world. She's only headed to homeroom. — Jodi Picoult

I told Seven the Bartender that true love is felonious.

"Not if they're over eighteen," he said, shutting the till of the cash register.

By then the bar itself had become an appendage, a second torso holding up my first. "You take someone's breath away," I stressed. "You rob them of the ability to utter a single word." I tipped the neck of the empty liquor bottle toward him. "You steal a heart."

He wiped up in front of me with a dishrag. "Any judge would toss that case out on its ass."

"You'd be surprised."

Seven spread the rag out on the brass bar to dry. "Sounds like a misdemeanor, if you ask me."

I rested my cheek on the cool, damp wood. "No way," I said. "Once you're in, it's for life. — Jodi Picoult

I know what she is talking about.
Namely, everything I refused to talk about, in court: what it is like to know that you are a target, because of the color of your skin. What it means to work hard, to be an impeccable employee, and have none of that make a difference in the face of prejudice. — Jodi Picoult

I used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyway. — Jodi Picoult

Just because you keep something a secret doesn't mean it never happened, no matter how much you want that to be true. — Jodi Picoult

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

Are we gonna talk about it, or are we gonna pretend nothing's wrong? — Jodi Picoult

We may not have the power yet, but what we have is each other.' My — Jodi Picoult

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

The thing about a mom is that she's always there. She's the one who rubs your back when you have the flu, who manages to notice you have no clean underwear and does your wash for you, who stocks the refrigerator with all the foods you love without having to ask. The thing about a mom is that you never imagine taking care of her, instead of the other way around. — Jodi Picoult

Twenty-eight years is a long time to think about why I loved you, and it's not for the reasons I first assumed: because you swam in the space below my heart; or because you stanched the youth I was bleeding out daily; or because one day you might take care of me when I couldn't take care of myself. [. . .] I loved you, Bethany, because you were the one relationship I never had to earn. You arrived in this world loving me more, even when I did not deserve it. — Jodi Picoult

The elephant's trunk strokes her cheek, her throat, her forehead, before slipping the scarf free and lifting it, so that the wind carries it off like a rumor. — Jodi Picoult

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

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

Pride is an evil dragon; it sleeps underneath your heart and then roars when you need silence. — Jodi Picoult

A mother has nine months to get used to sharing the space where her heart is; for a father it comes on sudden, like a storm that changes the landscape forever. — 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

A dutiful mother is someone who follows every step her child makes ... And a good mother is someone whose child wants to follow her. — Jodi Picoult

She smelled like fresh dough rising. — Jodi Picoult

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

Oh shit, i think. my cheeks are on fire; my heart starts to pound. — Jodi Picoult

You signed no contract to become a parent, but the responsibilities were written in invisible ink. There was a point when you had to support your child, even if no one else would. It was your job to rebuild the bridge, even if your child was the one who burned it in the first place. — Jodi Picoult

...when you loved someone, you didn't want to be the one who brought their world crashing down. — Jodi Picoult

Power isn't about doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, Reiner. It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to. — Jodi Picoult

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

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

Suffering so someone else didn't have to suffer. Sacrificing your body for someone else's well being. — Jodi Picoult

You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page. — Jodi Picoult

It was one of those moments where I knew we were not having the conversation that we needed to be having. And since I didn't really know what to say, never having crossed this particular bridge between thought and deed before, I pressed my and against the thick ridge in his pants. He backed away from me. — Jodi Picoult

He used to say that life was all about a boy finding the perfect girl; he was lucky enough to have been handed his in a labor and delivery room. — Jodi Picoult

He isn't Eric, so our lips don't move in a familiar rhythm. He isn't Eric, and so our teeth grit against each other. He holds the back of my head, as if he is afraid I will break away. My heart beats so hard I begin to feel it in forgotten places: behind my eyes, at the base of my throat, between my legs. — Jodi Picoult

Since it had gotten so quiet in the room that you could hear the sound of your own doubts ... — Jodi Picoult

Dogs are like the kids in school I cannot stand: the ones who hang around and then leave when they realize they are not getting what they want or need from the conversation. They travel in packs. They lick you and you think it's because they like you, but it's really just because your fingers still smell like your turkey sandwich. — Jodi Picoult

For the risk of it, for the sheer surprise of pressing one's nose to the glass and finding someone staring back on the other side. — Jodi Picoult

When I run across something so incredible that I want to show it to someone else. The problem is, when you make the choice to be a loner, you lose that privilege. — 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

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

Sage shakes her head. "Surely there were some Germans who were better than others, some who didn't want to go along with what Hitler said. If you can't see them as individuals - if you can't forgive the ones who ask for it - doesn't that make you just as bad as any Nazi?""No," I admit. "It makes me human. — Jodi Picoult

Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say? — Jodi Picoult

If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask ... with nothing beneath it? — Jodi Picoult

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

I wanted him to feel what I felt when I was with him: that incredible combination of comfort, decadence, and wonder; the knowledge that, with just a single taste of him, I was addicted. — Jodi Picoult