Quotes From "Vanishing Acts" By Jodi Picoult

Eric understands that the world is rarely the way it is supposed to be. And he knows that, given the chance, we don't have to wait for someone to make messes of our lives. We do a good enough job, ourselves. Jodi Picoult

Sometimes parents don't find what they're looking for it their child, so they plant seeds for what they'd like to grow there instead. I've witnessed this with the former hockey player who takes his son out to skate before he can even walk. Or in the mother who gave up her ballet dreams when she married, but now scrapes her daughter's hair into a bun and watched from the wings of the stage. We are not, as you'd expect, orchestrating their lives; we are not even trying for a second chance. We are hoping that if this one thing takes root, it might take up enough light and space to keep something else from developing in our children: the disappointment we've already lived. Jodi Picoult

What is a parent, really, but somebody who picks up the things a child leaves behind - a trail made of stripped off clothing, orphaned shoes, tiny bright plastic game pieces, and nostalgia - and who hands back each of these when its needed? Jodi Picoult

Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength - and the honesty - to break them down. Jodi Picoult

For God's sake, if I learned anything during this damn trial it's that the only way someone can leave you is if you let them. And I'm not doing that, Dee. It may look like that today, or tomorrow, or even a month from now, but one day you're going to wake up and see that this whole time you've been gone, you've only been headed back to where you started. And I'll be there, waiting." He leans forward and kisses me once, feather-light, on the lips. "It's not like I'm not letting you go, " he murmurs. "I'm just trusting you enough to come back. Jodi Picoult

When your mother is made out of your dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you. Jodi Picoult

By now you've already formed your own impression. you believe that an act committed a lifetime ago defines a man, or you believe that a person's past has nothing to do with his future. you think i am either a hero, or a monster. maybe knowning more about circumstances will make you think differently about me, but it won't change what happened twenty-eight years ago. Jodi Picoult

In half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past. 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

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

Elise Vasquez and I stand shoulder to shoulder, watching the woman we both feel we lost, and may be never really had. Jodi Picoult

If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me. Jodi Picoult

When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again, yet after having given birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep it close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one. Jodi Picoult

Neither of us, it turns out, has been the only one who lost someone she loved. 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

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

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

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

...when they look at me, I so badly want to be who they see. Jodi Picoult

It was the first time she'd discovered something she really didn't want to find, and she didn't know what to do once she'd found it. Jodi Picoult

I would tell them that when you look at a person, you never know what the're hiding. Jodi Picoult

That's the crazy things about lies, you start to believe them yourself." (pg. 342) Jodi Picoult

Do you ever go back?" Ruthann nods, "When I need to remember where I came from, or where I'm headed. Jodi Picoult

We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right." (pg. 481) Jodi Picoult