Jodi Picoult Quotes

You make yourself strong because it's expected of you. You become confident because someone beside you is unsure. You turn into the person others need you to be.

See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it

It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened when you let yourself get close to someone, when you started to believe they loved you: you'd be disappointed. Depend on someone, and you might as well admit you're going to be crushed, because when you really needed them, they wouldn't be there. Either that, or you'd confide in them and you added to their problems. All you ever really had was yourself, and that sort of sucked if you were less than reliable.

Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed — sometimes it covers you just fine, and other times it leaves you cold and shaking; and worst of all, you never know which of the two it's going to be.

I know how difficult it can be when the image you've had of something doesn't match its reality; when the friend beside you turns into a monster.

It doesn't take a whole long life to realize that what we deserve to have, we rarely get.

So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was substance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream.

There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.

In the moments before, she laid a hand on his arm. 'No matter what,' she said, giving him a look, 'you cannot stop.

Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth.

"You don't have to say I love you to say I love you," you said with a shrug. "All you have to do is say my name and I know."

..."Can't you hear it?" you said. "When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it's safe inside your mouth."

I ...understand how a parent might hit a child- it's because you can look into their eyes and see a reflection of yourself that you wish you hadn't.

Something still exists as long as there's someone around to remember it.

He smiles at me, and I am suddenly seventeen again - the year I realize that love doesn't follow the rules, the year I understood that nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable

You know someone's right for you when the things they don't have to say are even more important than the things they do.