Jodi Picoult Quotes

I used to wonder about the fake pictures that came in frames you buy at the store—ladies with smooth brown hair and show-me smiles, grapefruit-headed babies on their sibling's knees—people who in real life probably were strangers brought together by a talent scout to be a phony family.Maybe it's not so different from real photos, after all.

~ Jodi Picoult

But even if every house looked identical-if all the furnishings were the same- it still wouldn't feel like yours.That's because home isn't where you are. It's who you're with.

~ Jodi Picoult

Eric understands that the world is rarely the way it is supposed to be. And he knows that, given the chance, we don't have to wait for someone to make messes of our lives. We do a good enough job, ourselves.

~ 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

Was that all it took to be brave? Knowing that someone believed in you?

~ Jodi Picoult

...courage wasn’t something you were bequeathed at birth, and it wasn’t a lack of fright. It was overcoming your fear, because the ones you love mattered more.

~ Jodi Picoult

If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.

~ 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

I wonder how much the general population of this country know that the legal system has far more to do with playing a good hand of poker than it does with justice.

~ Jodi Picoult

every now and then, i worry about people in the third world countries. and then i figure if they all started having sex, their lives would be considerably brighter.

~ Jodi Picoult

words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.

~ Jodi Picoult

Sometimes parents don't find what they're looking for it their child, so they plant seeds for what they'd like to grow there instead. I've witnessed this with the former hockey player who takes his son out to skate before he can even walk. Or in the mother who gave up her ballet dreams when she married, but now scrapes her daughter's hair into a bun and watched from the wings of the stage. We are not, as you'd expect, orchestrating their lives; we are not even trying for a second chance. We are hoping that if this one thing takes root, it might take up enough light and space to keep something else from developing in our children: the disappointment we've already lived.

~ Jodi Picoult

Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who'd sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who'd cried with me over boyfriends, who'd clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother?Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

~ Jodi Picoult

Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they don't want their kids... but when you look more closely, you realize that they're doing those kids a favor. They're just trying to give them a better life.

~ Jodi Picoult

And that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through.

~ Jodi Picoult

It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didn't have to look for, didn't have to prove anything to, didn't have to worry about losing. Which is why, when it happened, it hurt so badly.

~ Jodi Picoult

Babies don't come with instruction booklets. You'd learn the same way we all do -- you'd read up on dinosaurs, you'd Google backhoes and skidders. And you don't need a penis to go buy a baseball glove.

~ Jodi Picoult

We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize she has the curves of a young woman; it's safer to say you're a good parent who has all the right conversations about drugs and sex than to acknowledge there are a thousand things she would never tell you.

~ Jodi Picoult

[I] don't think I was trying to kill myself. I just wanted to hurt, and understand exactly whay I was hurting. This made sense: you cut, you felt pain, period.

~ Jodi Picoult

I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-new house to gather dust. Maybe that was the process more commonly described as bonding: the act of learning your child as well as you know yourself.

~ 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

Children are supposed to go to school, play on swing sets, skin their knees.

~ Jodi Picoult

Logically, I understand that it wasn't Edward's fault my family fell apart after he left. But when you're eleven years old, you don't give a flip about logic. You just really miss holding your big brother's hand.

~ Jodi Picoult

It was easier for girls. They could say This hurts, or I don’t like how this feels, and have the complaint be socially acceptable. Boys, though, didn’t speak that language. They didn’t learn it as children and they didn’t manage to pick it up as adults, either.

~ Jodi Picoult

Even if we have grown so far apart that we don't recognize each other when we pass, we have this life, this block of time, and what do you think about that?

~ 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

What is a parent, really, but somebody who picks up the things a child leaves behind - a trail made of stripped off clothing, orphaned shoes, tiny bright plastic game pieces, and nostalgia - and who hands back each of these when its needed?

~ Jodi Picoult

When feeling came back, in a storm of color and force and sensation, the most you could do was hold on to the person beside you and hope you could weather it. Alex closed her eyes and expected the worst-but it wasn't a bad thing; it was just a different thing. A messier one, more complicated one. She hesitated, and then she kissed Patrick back, willing to concede that you might have to lose control before you could find what you'd been missing.

~ Jodi Picoult

The English judged a person so that they'd be justified in casting her out. The Amish judged a person so that they'd be justified in welcoming her back. Where I'm from, if someone is accused of sinning, it's not so that others can place blame. It's so that the person can make amends and move on.

~ Jodi Picoult

History tells us that six million Jews disappeared during that war. If there was no Holocaust, where did they go?' She shakes her head. 'All of that, and the world didn't learn anything. Look around. There's still ethnic cleansing. There's discrimination.

~ Jodi Picoult

Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength - and the honesty - to break them down.

~ Jodi Picoult

It is a curious thing, watching a strong man fall to pieces.

~ Jodi Picoult

I can see myself now, she said. And I can see what I want to be, ten years from now. But I don't understand how I'm going to get from here to there.

~ Jodi Picoult

If I have gained anything over these months, it is the knowledge there is no starting over- only living with the mistakes you've made.

~ Jodi Picoult

Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.

~ Jodi Picoult

A very wise man once told me that you can't look back-you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.

~ Jodi Picoult

In the space between yes and no, there is a lifetime. It’s the difference between the path you walk and one you leave behind; it’s the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; it’s the legroom for the lies you will tell yourself in the future.

~ Jodi Picoult

You can believe something really hard,' Faith says, 'and still be wrong.

~ Jodi Picoult

There are so many things I can't believe. That people deserve what they get, both bad and good. That one day I'll live in a world where people are judged by what they do instead of who they are. That happy endings don't have contingencies and conditions.

~ Jodi Picoult

She didn't like it when religious folks looked down on her for being an atheist; but to be honest, I didn't see how this was any different from the way she looked down on people for being Christians.

~ Jodi Picoult