Jodi Picoult

“From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest.Darkness, you know, is relative.”

“If it is possible to die of grief then why on earth can't someone be healed by happiness?”

“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.”

“I don't understand why it's a sin if you love something and want to keep it from having to suffer.”

“Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no longer see their next moves.”

“Men. You can't live with them...and you can't legally shoot them. I tossed out my husband eight years ago and got a llama instead. Best decision I ever made.”

“You have to understand what you’re missing before you can really feel a loss.”

“You know, Sage, Jesus didn't tell us to forgive everyone. He said turn the other cheek, but only if you the one who was hit. Even the Lord's Prayer says it loud and clear: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Not others. What Jesus challenges us to do is to let go of the wrong done to you personally, not the wrong done to someone else. But most Christians incorrectly assume that this means that being a good christian means forgiving all sins, and the sinners.”

“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.”

“It's not because I don't want to hurt Delia's feelings. It's because when she is bruised, I'm the one who aches.”

“And oh she had been broken. She hid it well, but Ross knew from personal experience that once you had put the pieces together, even though you might look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall”

“I sigh. “But if you’d talked to Jules—if she could hear you . . .” My voice trails off.“Then you wouldn’t feel quite so crazy?” Oliver asks gently. “Can’t you believe in me, if I believe in you?”

“He kissed her so gently she wondered if she had imagined it”

“The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark... Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas - a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak.”

“My first strike was marrying a guy without a college degree. My second and third were getting pregnant. I suppose that when I didn't go on to become the next Gloria Allred, she was justified in counting me a failure. And I suppose that until now, I was justified in thinking that I wasn't one.”

“כולנו איבדנו, אני משערת. לכן אנחנו מגיעים הנה: כדי לשמור על קשר עם מה שחסר.”

“אנשים סובלים מכל מיני סוגים של אובדן — מקטן עד גדול. אפשר לאבד מפתחות, משקפיים, בתולים. אפשר לאבד את הראש, אפשר לאבד את הלב, אפשר לאבד את הנפש. אפשר לאבד את הבית ולעבור למוסד סיעודי, או להיות הורה לילד שעבר לחיות בחו"ל, או לראות בן זוג מתפוגג בנבכי השיטיון. אובדן הוא יותר מסתם מוות, ואֵבֶל הוא משַנֵה־הצורה האפור של הרגש.”

“הטבע יודע מה הוא רוצה, אבל זה לא הופך את העניין לקל יותר בשבילנו.”

“לפיכך היו אנשים שהחשיבו אותו לגאון. השאר חשבו שהוא מטורף.”

“אפילו במבט לאחור איני מסוגל להסביר מדוע עשיתי את זה. זה היה משהו ביני לבין הנמר, ההכרה הזאת בכך שאני חופשי והוא לא. העובדה שחייו הבלתי צפויים, הפראיים, הצטמצמו לשתי הופעות קרקס קטנות בצהריים ובערב.”