Jodi Picoult Quotes

Whether it was power they sought, or revenge, or love-well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it.

~ Jodi Picoult

I learn from my own daughter that you don’t have to be awake to cry.

~ Jodi Picoult

Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.

~ Jodi Picoult

See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory thatsomeone has left this world, you are still in it. And the very act of livingis a tide: at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one dayyou look down and see how much pain has eroded.

~ Jodi Picoult

When you have been burned by fire once, you don't leap into the flames again.

~ Jodi Picoult

Our culture promotes individuality, while the Amish are deeply entrenched in community. To us, if someone stands out, it's no big deal because diversity is respected and expected. To the Amish, there's no room for deviation from the norm. It's important to fit in, because that similarity of identity is what defines the society. If you don't fit in, the consequences are psychological tragic, you stand alone when all you've ever known is being part of the group.

~ Jodi Picoult

On the other hand, I think cats have Asperger's. Like me, they're very smart. And like me, sometimes they simply need to be left alone.

~ Jodi Picoult

Repeat the same action over and over again, and eventually it will feel right. Eventually, there isn't even any guilt.

~ Jodi Picoult

...one half leaning in, one half pulling away.

~ Jodi Picoult

Most people who offer their help do it to make themselves feel better, not us. To be honest, I don't blame them. It's superstition: If you give assistance to the family in need... if you throw salt over your shoulder... if you don't step on the cracks, then maybe you'll be immune. Maybe you'll be able to convince yourself that this could never happen to you.

~ Jodi Picoult

What if, ladies and gentlemen, today I told you that anyone here who was born on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday was free to leave right now? Also, they'd be given the most central parking spots in the city, and the biggest houses. They would get job interviews before others who were born later in the week, and they'd be taken first at the doctor's office, no matter how many patients were waiting in line. If you were born from Thursday to Sunday, you might try to catch up – but because you were straggling behind, the press would always point to how inefficient you are. And if you complained, you'd be dismissed for playing the birth-day card.” I shrug. “Seems silly, right? But what if on top of these arbitrary systems that inhibited your chances for success, everyone kept telling you that things were actually pretty equal?

~ Jodi Picoult

Did you ever think our misfortune is directly related to your good fortune? Maybe the house your parents bought was on the market because the sellers didn't want my mama in the neighborhood. Maybe the good grades that eventually led you to law school were possible because your mama didn't have to work eighteen hours a day, and was there to read to you at night, or make sure you did your homework. How often do you remind yourself how lucky you are that you own your house, because you were able to build up equity through generations in a way families of color can't? How often do you open your mouth at work and think how awesome it is that no one's thinking you're speaking for everyone with the same skin color you have? How hard is it for you to find the greeting card for your baby's birthday with a picture of a child that has the same color skin as her? How many times have you seen a painting of Jesus that looks like you? Prejudice goes both ways, you know. There are people who suffer from it, and there are people who profit from it.

~ Jodi Picoult

Skin color doesn't make you different,' Melody said. 'We're all the same on the inside.' 'The only people who ever say that,' Raymon replied, 'are white.

~ Jodi Picoult

I think there are two different oceans - the one that plays with you in the summer, and the one that gets so mad in the winter.

~ Jodi Picoult

All it takes is a second and your whole life can get turned upside down.

~ Jodi Picoult

My mother used to say that sometimes if you turn a tragedy over in your hand, you can see a miracle running through it, like fool's gold in the hardest shard of rock.

~ 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

Nowadays, I dont have expectations, and this way she beats them all.

~ 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

When you get down to it, though, explaining what you believe isn't all that easy. If you say that you believe something to be true, you might mean one of two things—that you're still weighing the alternatives, or that you accept it as a fact. I don't logically see how one single word can have contradictory definitions, but emotionally, I completely understand. Because there are times I think what I am doing is right, and there are other times I second-guess myself every step of the way.

~ Jodi Picoult

People believe in God because they don't have any other explanation for things that happen.

~ Jodi Picoult

I love the way he smelled whenever his head dipped close to hear what I was saying—like the sun striking th cheek of a tomato, or soap drying in the hood of a car. I loved the way his hand felt on my spine. I loved.

~ Jodi Picoult

What I want, more than anything, is to turn back time a little. To become the kid I used to be, who believed whatever my mother said was one hundred percent true and right without looking hard enough to see the hairline cracks.

~ Jodi Picoult

McAfee, I could try this case in my sleep and still win.Guess that's your plan, then, since you're clearly dreaming.

~ Jodi Picoult

They look up at me and see a rich lady in maternity clothes. They don't realize I am one of them.

~ Jodi Picoult

When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a piece of yourself inside her, because sometimes that is what it takes to claim.

~ Jodi Picoult

Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

~ Jodi Picoult

It's raining.the kind of rain that comes down so heavy it sounds like the shower's running, even when you've turned it off. The kind of rain that makes you think of dams and flash floods, arks. The kind of rain that tells you to crawl back into bed, where the sheets haven't lost your body heat, to pretend that the clock is five minutes earlier than it really is.Ask any kid who's made it past fourth grade and they can tell you: water never stops moving. Rain falls, and runs down a mountain into a river. The river finds it way to the ocean. It evaporates, like a soul, into the clouds. And then, like everything else, it starts all over again.

~ Jodi Picoult

I used to sit in front of my father's Jag, watching the raindrops run their kamikaze suicide missions from one edge of the windshield to the wiper blade.

~ Jodi Picoult

I suddenly remember being very little and being embraced by my father. I would try to put my arms around my father's waist, hug him back. I could never reach the whole way around the equator of his body; he was that much larger than life. Then one day, I could do it. I held him, instead of him holding me, and all I wanted at that moment was to have it back the other way.

~ Jodi Picoult

Unlike Elise, who could discover parts of a person they didn't even know were absent, you specialized in tangible, but that, I feared, was only a matter of time.

~ Jodi Picoult

Doing the right thing for someone else occasionally means doing something that feels wrong to you.

~ Jodi Picoult

Sometimes knowing what's right isn't a rational decision, or even what works on paper. Sometimes leaving is the best course of action after all.

~ Jodi Picoult

It was possible that a miracle was not something that happened to you, but rather something that didn’t.

~ Jodi Picoult

When we sat down on the couch again, you curled up against my side, like you used to when you were a tod

~ Jodi Picoult

I drew it over my skin like a violins bow, No one would ever hear the song of my shame.

~ Jodi Picoult

she didn't need anyone. At Wheeler, even when she stood out with her pink hair and quilter army-surplus jacket and combat bots, she did this without apology. It was a great irony that the very fact of a relationship with her would diminish her appeal, that the moment she came to love me back and depend on me as much as I depended on her, she would no longer be a truly independent spirit. No way in hell was I going to be the one to take that quality away from her.

~ Jodi Picoult

We all know that a sky with clouds in it is much more interesting than one that doesn’t have any.

~ Jodi Picoult

The only thing they'll let you shoot with a camera.

~ Jodi Picoult

That's the crazy thing about lies. You start to fall for them, yourself.

~ Jodi Picoult