1
Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.Jodi Picoult
2
If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't?Jodi Picoult
3
She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before. And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving. I have loved before, but it didn't feel like this. I have kissed before, but it didn't burn me alive. Maybe it lasts a minute, and maybe it's an hour. All I know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against mine, and that even if I did not know it until now, I have been waiting for this person forever.Jodi Picoult
4
Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had.Jodi Picoult
5
Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers, interrupt dinner.Jodi Picoult
6
The wolves knew when it was time to stop looking for what they'd lost, to focus instead on what was yet to come.Jodi Picoult
7
Like a missing tooth, sometimes an absence is more noticeable than a presence.Jodi Picoult
8
If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.Jodi Picoult
9
Cara: I used to believe everything my brother told me, because he was older and I figured he knew more about the world. But as it turns out, being a grown-up doesn't mean you're fearless. It just means you fear different things.Jodi Picoult
10
Clearly God was in some kind of mood on my birthday.Jodi Picoult
11
Edward: You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal? he used to say to me. A plan.Jodi Picoult
12
Was that all it took to be brave? Knowing that someone believed in you?Jodi Picoult
13
...courage wasn’t something you were bequeathed at birth, and it wasn’t a lack of fright. It was overcoming your fear, because the ones you love mattered more.Jodi Picoult
14
When feeling came back, in a storm of color and force and sensation, the most you could do was hold on to the person beside you and hope you could weather it. Alex closed her eyes and expected the worst-but it wasn't a bad thing; it was just a different thing. A messier one, more complicated one. She hesitated, and then she kissed Patrick back, willing to concede that you might have to lose control before you could find what you'd been missing. .Jodi Picoult
15
People believed what they wanted to believe, no matter what was right in front of their eyes.Jodi Picoult
16
Maybe you had to come close to losing something before you could remember its value.Jodi Picoult
17
There are all sorts of losses people suffer- from the small to the large. You can lose your car keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.Jodi Picoult
18
You know, he told me once, completely exasperated, you've got one glass of water inside your head, with all the tears for a lifetime. If you waste them over nothing, then you won't be able to cry for real when you need to.Jodi Picoult
19
[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
20
Home is not a place, but rather, the people who love you.Jodi Picoult
21
But it seems to me that growing up means you stop hoping for the best, and start expecting the worst. So 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?Jodi Picoult
22
It's the child who's supposed to cry, and the mom who makes it all better, not the other way around, which is why mothers will move heaven and earth to hold it together in front of their own kids.Jodi Picoult
23
You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else. I need you, she replied. Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.Jodi Picoult