Top 1119 Quotes & Sayings by Jodi Picoult - Page 14

Things don't always look as they seem.

I think that when you live in a world with limits... when you've met everyone and seem everything you're going to see - you lose the hope that something extraordinary will happen in your life

Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn't really what's true?

I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending

How do you tell an adult that maybe everything wrong in the world stems from the fact that she's stopped believing the impossible can happen?

Saying goodbye to the people you love isn't easy

I loved Alex so much that it was easier to let him hurt me than to watch him hurt himself.

I could think whatever I wanted to, but realized that any promises I made myself were destined to be broken.

This isn't a lie, actually. I don't care why Edward left. All I really want to know is why I wasn't enough to make him stay.

Teachers deserve respect," I explain. "Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?

You keep distracting me,” I tell her. “All I’m doing is sitting here talking to you!” “Exactly,” I say, and I smile at her.j

It still hurts," she whispered. "Even when you're doing it for someone else, that doesn't stop your ribs from getting cracked, or your wrist swelling, or your cuts from bleeding.

When she wanted to escape her life, she read books

Sometimes Chris wished he could sneak a peek at the back of the book, so to speak, and see how it was all going to turn out, so that he wouldn't have to bother going through the motions.

Why is it that only in the very beginnings of a relationship are you aware of the heat coming from inside a person, of the number of inches you would have to move for your shoulders to brush as if it were an accident?

I have come to believe that this life I'm wearing will never really fit.

Being a teenager isn't all that different from being part of someone else's story. There's always someone who thinks they know better than you do

Home is not a place, but rather, the people you love

We believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist.

Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it's any less true.

Sometimes the key to happiness is just expecting a little bit less

What if instead of focusing on what you don't have, you concentrate on what you've got?

Just so you know, when they say "once upon a time"....they're lying. It's not once upon a time. Its not even twice upon a time. It's hundreds of times, over and over, every time someone opens up the pages of this dusty old book.

Princes don't come around everyday, and happy endings don't grow on trees

I think her flaws make me love her even more. She's not perfect, but she's perfect to me

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

Leave it to a man to mess things up

It takes two people to make a friendship work

I closed my eyes and curled my fists around the things I knew for sure: That a scallop has thirty-five eyes, all blue. That a tuna will suffocate if it ever stops swimming. That I was loved. That this time, it was not me who broke

This was the reason there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that didn't have words big enough to describe them.

Marina sighs. "Love's a tidal wave," she says. "Because it sweeps you off your feet?" I ask. "No. Because it sucks you under and you drown.

There was, really, nothing you could use as a blueprint for your life, except your past. There was no starting over. There was only picking up the pieces someone had left behind.

You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don't want to say it out loud-for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there's a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together-huddle and circle our wagons-and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? And what if, God forbid, they got it wrong?

[Jules] slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. “Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we’re out of purgatory for the weekend.” “Maybe later,” I murmur, still distracted by the day’s previous events. “So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested.” “Huh?” I say.

You can blame your ugliness for keeping people at bay, when in reality you're crippled by the thought of letting another person close enough to popentially scar you even more deeply. You can tell yourself that it's safer to love someone who will never really love you back, because you can't lose someone you never had.

We could all be lucky. We could all be what we want to be, instead of who someone else told us to be.

Men don't traipse. We... Swagger

A woman isn't all that different from a bonfire. A fire's a beautiful thing, right? Something you can't take your eyes off, when it's burning. If you can keep it contained, it'll throw light and heat for you. It's only when it gets out of control that you have to go on the offensive.

When I was little, the great mystery to me was not how babies were made, but why?

That's what love is. It's some power greater than you and me, that draws us to one special person

I've always been able to see you," I say. "It's a rather lovely view.

The best way to prevent a heartache was to cushion the coming blow.

Once you call something a story, it's set in stone. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end that can't be transformed, because by definition, if you do that, it's not the same story anymore

Here's what no one ever tells you about love: it hurts, having your heart broken

May I ask you something?" I say. "Why do you read books, when you could be outside, living a million different adventures every day?" "Because you can always count on a book to stay the same. EVerything else changes when you least expect it," she replies, bitter. "Families split apart, and nothing's forever. In books, you always know what's coming next. There are no surprises.

I only just found you, I can't lose you now

What makes a treasure a treasure." Marine replied, "is how rare a find it is, when you need it the most.

Love makes life a little brighter

You figured that the only way I'd be happy is if I did the things you thought would be best for me.

When a freedom is taken away from you, I suppose, you recognize it as a privilege, not a right.

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.

All writers start with a layer of truth, don't they? If not, their stories would be nothing but spools of cotton candy, a fleeting taste wrapped around nothing but air.

Hunger, she often tells me, has nothing to do with the belly and everything to do with the mind. What Mary really runs isn't a bakery, but a community.

There are so many ways a family can unravel. All it takes is a tiny slash of selfishness, a rip of greed, a puncture of bad luck. And yet, woven tightly, family can be the strongest bond imaginable.

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?

I realize how quickly lies compound. They cover like a coat of paint, one on top of the other, until you cannot remember what color you started with.

But that's what love is, isn't it? When it hurts you more to see someone suffer than it does to take the pain away?

But if you seek forgiveness, doesn't that automatically mean you cannot be a monster? By definition, doesn't that desperation make you human again?

If you end your story, it's a static work of art, a finite circle. But if you don't, it belongs to anyone's imagination. It stays alive forever.

Life was what happened when all the what-ifs didn't.