Quotes From "Handle With Care" By Jodi Picoult

When you love someone, you say their name different. Like...
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When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it's safe inside your mouth. Jodi Picoult
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People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more. Jodi Picoult
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I think you can love a person too much. You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don't even realize what you look like, how far you've deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else. . Jodi Picoult
All any of us wanted, really, was to know that...
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All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here. Jodi Picoult
What we all want, really, is to be loved. That...
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What we all want, really, is to be loved. That craving drives our worst behavior. Jodi Picoult
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Here's a news flash for the ladies: for every one of you who thinks we all want a girl like Angelina Jolie, all skinny elbows and angles, the truth is, we'd rather curl up with someone like Charlotte - a woman who's soft when a guy wraps his arms around her; a woman who might have a smear of flour on her shirt the whole day and not notice or care, not even when she goes out to meet with the PTA; a woman who doesn't feel like an exotic vacation but is the home we can't wait to come back to. Jodi Picoult
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Maybe you expected marriage to be perfect - I guess that's where you and I are different. See, I thought it would be all about making mistakes, but doing it with someone who's there to remind you what you learned along the way. Jodi Picoult
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But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here. Jodi Picoult
When you showed someone how you felt, it was fresh...
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When you showed someone how you felt, it was fresh and honest. When you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation. Jodi Picoult
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Words got in the way. The things we felt the hardest--like what it was like to have a boy touch you as if you were made of light, or what it meant to be the only person in the room who wasn't noticed--weren't sentences; they were knots in the wood of our bodies, places where our blood flowed backward. If you asked me, not that anyone ever did, the only words worth saying were I'm sorry. Jodi Picoult
Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you...
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Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you ran the risk of losing your child. Jodi Picoult
It never failed to amaze me how the most ordinary...
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It never failed to amaze me how the most ordinary day could be catapulted into the extraordinary in the blink of an eye. Jodi Picoult
But memory is like plaster: peel it back and you...
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But memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture. Jodi Picoult
When you think you're right, you're most likely wrong.
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When you think you're right, you're most likely wrong. Jodi Picoult
Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once...
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Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once you get God on board. Jodi Picoult
No, honestly, my mouth shouldn't be able to function unless...
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No, honestly, my mouth shouldn't be able to function unless my brain's engaged. Jodi Picoult
A sacrament--like marriage--means living a life better than your natural...
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A sacrament--like marriage--means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you're modeling God. And God never gives up. Jodi Picoult
It felt like I'd been living underground, and for a...
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It felt like I'd been living underground, and for a moment, I'd been given this glimpse of the sky. Once you've seen that, how can you go back where you came from? Jodi Picoult
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She'd been in labor for nineteen hours; I completely understood why she wanted to pass the buck. 'You are so beautiful, ' her husband crooned, holding up her shoulders.' You are so full of shit, ' Lila snarled, but as a contraction settled over her like a net, she bore down and pushed. Jodi Picoult
Lawyers were notorious for finding cases in the most unlikely...
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Lawyers were notorious for finding cases in the most unlikely places, especially ones with huge potential damagers awards. Jodi Picoult
Although you hadn't asked why, it had less to do...
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Although you hadn't asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer. Jodi Picoult
Maybe I was naïve to think that silence was implicit...
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Maybe I was naïve to think that silence was implicit complacence, instead of a festering question. Maybe I was silly to believe that friends owed each other anything. Jodi Picoult
I truly believed that the cost of success for us...
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I truly believed that the cost of success for us shouldn't be the cost of failure for a good friend. Jodi Picoult
Maybe that's what we do to the people we love:...
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Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late that we've wounded the people we are trying to protect. Jodi Picoult
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I wondered about the explorers who'd sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams. Jodi Picoult
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I always hated when my scars started to fade, because as long as I could still see them, I knew why I was hurting. Jodi Picoult
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There are kinds of pain that you can't speak out loud. Jodi Picoult
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When you love someone - when you create a child with him - you don't just suddenly lose that bond. Like any other energy, it can't be destroyed, just channeled into something else. Jodi Picoult
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It was a strange thing, to still be in love with your wife and to not know if you liked her. What would happen when this was all over? Could you forgive someone if she hurt you and the people you love, if she truly believed she was only trying to help? I had filed for divorce, but that wasn't what I really wanted. What I really wanted was for all of us to go back two years, and start over. Had I ever really told her that?. Jodi Picoult
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So much of marriage was implicit and nonverbal. Had I gotten so complacent I'd forgotten to communicate? Jodi Picoult
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I wondered why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet. Jodi Picoult
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I'd missed this so much, this simple pleasure. The sensation of a heavy shaft sliding over my tongue, pushing deeper and deeper into me until my lips bumped against my hand. Josephine Myles
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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
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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
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[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
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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
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You don't have to say I love you to say I love you. Jodi Picoult
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It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened when you let yourself get close to someone, when you started to believe they loved you: you'd be disappointed. Depend on someone, and you might as well admit you're going to be crushed, because when you really needed them, they wouldn't be there. Either that, or you'd confide in them and you added to their problems. All you ever really had was yourself, and that sort of sucked if you were less than reliable. Jodi Picoult
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It was one thing to sacrifice your own life for someone else's. It was another thing entirely to bring into the mix a third party - a third party who knew you, who trusted you implicitly. Jodi Picoult
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Was there a language of loss? Did everyone who suffered speak a different dialect? Jodi Picoult
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I told myself that if I didn't care, this wouldn't have hurt so much - surely that proved I was alive and human and all those touchy-feely things, for once and for all. But that wasn't a relief, not when I felt like a skyscraper with dynamite on every floor. Jodi Picoult
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Memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture. Jodi Picoult
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What was wrong with me? I had a decent life. I was healthy. I wasn't starving or maimed by a land mine or orphaned. Yet somehow, it wasn't enough. I had a hole in me, and everything I took for granted slipped through it like sand. I felt like I had swallowed yeast, like whatever evil was festering inside me had doubled in size. Jodi Picoult
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The cost of growth is always a small act of violence. Jodi Picoult
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I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination. Jodi Picoult
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I don't understand why it's a sin if you love something and want to keep it from having to suffer. Jodi Picoult
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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
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When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance. Jodi Picoult
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What you didn't tell someone was just as debilitating as what you did. Jodi Picoult
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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