Jodi Picoult Quotes

If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase-not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been-what would you take?

~ Jodi Picoult

I want to believe there's a God. Because I sure as hell know there's a devil.

~ Jodi Picoult

This was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone...a security blanket, an ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always feel its presence like a swelling secret stone, and that way when she let go of the rage, she would not feel nearly as empty.

~ Jodi Picoult

Sometimes I think there's a beast that lives inside me, in the cavern that's where my heart should be, and every now and then it fills every last inch of my skin, so that I can't help but do something inappropriate. Its breath is full of lies; it smells of spite.

~ Jodi Picoult

The feeling that she was going to explode, that she was too big for her own skin.

~ Jodi Picoult

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.

~ Jodi Picoult

You can't hate someone until you know what it might be like to love them.

~ Jodi Picoult

As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter's behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.

~ Jodi Picoult

You cannot hate someone until you know what it might be like to love them.

~ Jodi Picoult

She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.

~ Jodi Picoult

When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance.

~ Jodi Picoult

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

~ Jodi Picoult

For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.

~ Jodi Picoult

The first Abenaki word I ever learned was Bitawbagok – the word they use for Lake Champlain. It means, literally, the waters between. Since I’ve come back from Quebec, I have thought of my address as Bitawkdakinna. I don’t know enough Abenaki to be sure it’s a real word, but translated, it is the world between. I had become a bridge between the natural world and the human one. I fit into both places and belonged to neither. Half of my heart lived with the wild wolves, the other half lived with my family.

~ Jodi Picoult

Like the teens I worked with, I understood the need for miracles--they kept reality from paralyzing you

~ Jodi Picoult

She's not classically beautiful, but somehow that only makes her more interesting.

~ Jodi Picoult

What you didn't tell someone was just as debilitating as what you did.

~ Jodi Picoult

(24/7) once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer.

~ Jodi Picoult

I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.Brian Fitzgerald, talking about his children.

~ Jodi Picoult

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.

~ Jodi Picoult

We're [parents]) always bluffing, pretending we know best, when most of the time we're just praying we won't screw up too badly.

~ Jodi Picoult

We are all, I suppose, beholden to our parents - the question is, how much?

~ Jodi Picoult

If you want to love a parent you have to understand the incredible investment he or she has in you. If you are a parent, and you want to be loved, you have to deserve it.

~ Jodi Picoult

But kids don't stay where they're supposed to. You turn around and find her not in the bedroom but hiding in a closet; you turn around and see she's not three but thirteen. 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.

~ Jodi Picoult

There were lies we told to save ourselves, and then there were lies we told to rescue others. What counted more, the mistruth, or the greater good?

~ Jodi Picoult

You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. But it’s a catch-22: all of those things that you’re willing to lose are what make you recognizable. Lose them, and you've lost yourself.

~ Jodi Picoult

I learned a long time ago with you that folks who were trying to be kind would rather do it with a macaroni-and-cheese bake than any personal involvement. You hand off a serving dish and you've done your job - no need to get personally involved, and your conscience is clean. Food is the currency of aid.

~ Jodi Picoult

[There's a] point where you have to leave the dough alone. It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. I have to admit, I often feel that way myself.

~ Jodi Picoult

You know, that was what we missed most. Not our beds, not our homes, not even our mothers. We would talk about food.

~ Jodi Picoult

Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.

~ Jodi Picoult

We sit for a few more moments, although there's really nothing left to say. This is new to me, too, an entire conversation that takes place in silence, because the heart has its own language. I will remember what Eric says even though he doesn't say a word. I will tell it to her.

~ Jodi Picoult

You don't have to say anything if you don't want to.Anna lies down, her head pillowed against my shoulder. Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas—a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak.

~ Jodi Picoult

We fall back into silence. I look around XO Café and notice that chatter happens mostly at tables where the diners are young and hip. The older couples, the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with their silverware, eat without the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?

~ Jodi Picoult

I realized it was like looking into the sun—you shouldn't do it, because you'd turn your face away and be blind to everything else.

~ Jodi Picoult

Campbell Julia says Don't do this to meDo what?Push me off the same cliff twice

~ Jodi Picoult

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?

~ Jodi Picoult

He's an egotistical dickhead who's going to chew you up and spit you out; and you have a really awful history of falling for assholes that you ought to run screaming from; and I don't feel like sitting around listening to you try to convince yourself you don't still feel something for Campbell Alexander when, in fact, you've spent the past fifteen years trying to fill in the hole he made inside you.

~ Jodi Picoult

If you travel in space for three years and come back, four hundred years will have passed on Earth. I am only an armchair astronomer, but I have the odd sense that I have returned from a journey to a world where nothing quite makes sense.

~ Jodi Picoult

Choices are funny things-ask a native tribe that's eaten grubs and roots forever if they're unhappy, and they'll shrug. But give them filet mignon and truffle sauce and then ask them to go back to living off the land, and they will always be thinking of that gourmet meal. If you don't know there's an alternative, you can't miss it.

~ Jodi Picoult

A trial, it often came down to who had the best story.

~ Jodi Picoult