Jodi Picoult

“A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you.”

“She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before. And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving. 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.”

“I think there are readers out there and I don't think the book is dead. And more importantly I don't think readers have to choose between literary and commercial fiction.”

“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.”

“I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.”

“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?”

“In half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past.”

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

“Wenn jemand starb, dem du dein Herz geschenkt hattest, nahm er es dann mit?”

“The Native Americans know that wolves are mirrors for humans. What they show us are our strengths and weaknesses... When I lived with the wolves, I was proud of the reflection of myself. But when I came back, I always paled in comparison.”

“Memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture.”

“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 whay they need?”

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

“Gay teenagers are four times as likely to attempt suicide as straight ones. I wish they knew that there's nothing wrong with them; that they are just a different shade of normal.”

“Every baby is born beautiful. It's what we project on them that makes them ugly.”

“I was one of the first authors to have an active website. I'm totally obsessed with technology. I'm always looking for ways to connect with my readers. I answer all my fan mail.”

“The truth was, history repeated itself on a daily basis; mistakes were made over and over. People were haunted by what they had done, and by what they hadn't had time to do.”

“I'm too much of a coward to kill myself. And too much of a coward to live”

“How could she trust this man, so imprecise with his words, to take care of the burial? To say there had been a loss was ludicrous; one lost a shoe or a pair 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.”

“On a shelf above my computer are five letters that spell out W-R-I-T-E. Just in case I forget why I'm there. I also have 'Wonder Woman' paraphernalia from when I wrote five issues of the comic, and pictures of my husband and kids.”