Top 1119 Quotes & Sayings by Jodi Picoult - Page 18

You don't make peace only with G-d. You make it with people. Sin isn't global. It's personal. If you do wrong to someone, the only way to fix that is to go to that same person and do right by him.

The problem was , you never heard anyone say,"wow, check out the brain on that babe.

Here I am, wasting away inside a book I wish I could escape, and all she wants to do is stay in the story. If I could talk to this girl Delilah, I’d ask her why on earth she would ever trade a single second of the world she’s in for the one in which I’m stuck

She's not like anyone I've ever seen before. When I'm not with her, I want to be. And when she opens the book and I see her face, I can barely remember what I'm supposed to say, much less how to speak at all." I test the words on my tongue. "I think I might be in love with her. But how can I really know, since the only love I've ever experienced was written for me?

I think there are crossroads in our lives when we make grand, sweeping decisions without even realizing it.

History isn't about dates and places and wars. It's about the people who fill the spaces between them.

don't say it. don't tell me that nobody's going to stare at me, because they will. don't tell me it doesn't matter, because it does. and don't tell me i look fine because that's a lie.

is it like this every night, while we're asleep?

Good people are good people; religion has nothing to do with it.

People have to experience things that terrify them. If they don't, how will they ever come to appreciate safety?

And he made love to her, offering his body in both tenderness and anger, unsure which was the best way to pass her bits of his soul so that she could patch her own with it

you're not a bad person because you want to be yourself.

People in the real world would kill for a happily ever after, and you're willing to just throw it away ?" I look away from her. "It's hardly a happily ever after when you wind up right at the beginning.

Each memory is like a paper flower stowed up a magician's sleeve: invisible one moment and then so substantial and florid the next I cannot imagine how it stayed hidden all this time. And like those paper flowers, once they've been let loose in the world, the memories are impossible to tuck away again.

something is always falling apart in me.

I don't know why it's called "getting lost." Even when you turn down the wrong street, when you find yourself at the dead end of a chain-link fence or a road that turnd to sand, you are somewhere. It just isn't where you expected to be.

That,” she says, “was never here before.

Nobody, who looks at a shard of flint lying beneath a rock ledge, or who finds a splintered log by the side of the road would ever find magic in their solitude. But in the right circumstances, if you bring them together, you can start a fire that consumes the world.

Energy can't be destroyed, only converted into something different. So when a person dies, where does that energy go?

Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets,lies,stories. We all tell them. Sometimes,because we hope to entertain. Sometimes,because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.

You can't be real," Delilah murmurs. "Says who?" I ask. "Did you really think that a story exists only when you're reading it?

He’s not your typical prince, more like a square peg in a round hole, kind of like me. He’s the sort of guy who wouldn’t mind reading side by side on a date.

Even though it hurt, there are kinds of pain you couldn't speak out loud.

You have to understand what you’re missing before you can really feel a loss.

And just like that, something inside shifted very subtly, so that all the empty spaces in him suddenly disappeared, so that his breath timed to hers, so that his blood sang. This is why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn’t have words big enough to describe them.

If history has a habit of repeating itself, doesn't someone have to stay behind to shout out a warning?

Maybe the reason I've never died in this story is that I've never had something worth dying for before.

You may be real, but you're still stuck in a book.

People change, but only if you give them room to do it.

Tutoring a four year old to get into an exclusive preschool made as much sense as hiring a swim coach for a guppy.

The best thing about endings is knowing that just ahead is the daunting task to start over.

The desperate usually succeed because they have nothing to lose.

It doesn't matter what it is that leaves a hole inside you. It just matters that it’s there.

The nurses, I have already learned, are the ones who give us the answers we’re desperate for. Unlike the doctors, who fidget like they need to be somewhere else, the nurses patiently answer us as if we are the first set of parents to ever have this kind of meeting with them, instead of the thousandth.

God doesn't give people burdens they can't handle.

She understood how a world jammed with phones, email, and faxes could still leave you feeling utterly alone.

Who spit in your porridge?

think about it: Romeo and Juliet bucked the system, and look where it got them. Superman has the hots for Lois Lane, when the better match, of course, would be with Wonder Woman.

You're unwilling to go out on a limb because it just might break underneath you.

I'm weird. Everyone says so.

it was possible to grow up in an instant, that you could look down and see the line in the sand dividing your life now from what it used to be.

It turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you’re alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice.

There are some nights when you just want to know there's someone else besides you in this wide world.

Talking out loud to fictional characters is just the tip of the iceberg.

What's worse ...? The devil you don't know ... or the devil you do?

Can you imagine what it would be like to know that your life was just going to be a series of days that were all the same, that were do-overs?

There are certain things I do not talk about.

You don't make a friend," Jacob said with a scowl. "It's not like they come with directions like you'd find on a box of macaroni and cheese.

?Pick ten strangers and stick them in a room, and ask them which of us they feel sorrier for - you or me - and we all know who they'll choose.

In America right now, the people who talk about race the most are people of color - and if we are going to move the needle forward, it's WHITE people who need to acknowledge their role in racism.

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.

The best relationships were the ones where both sides went out of their way to make sure the other wasn't disappointed.

Life can change in an instant.

The legal system works really well, if you communicate a certain way. But if you don't, it all goes to Hell in a handbasket really quickly.

I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.

I keep quite busy, walk 5 miles a day, and have an excellent hairdresser who keeps the gray out of my red hair.

The book that made me want to be a writer in the first place was Gone with the Wind - I read it and wanted to create a whole world out of words, too.

But mostly I wondered why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet. I still loved him. It felt like anything else permanent that has gone missing; a lost tooth, a severed leg. You might know better, but that doesn’t keep your tongue from poling at the hole in your gum, or your phantom limb from aching.

Eventually, I told myself not to expect anything from him, and as a result it has gotten easier for me to take what comes.

If you don't know there's an alternative, you can't miss it