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18844c8
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I grew up in a household where we didn't really talk about our feelings, and where the only reason you went to a doctor was because you'd accidentally cut off a limb with a chain saw.
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humor
families
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Jodi Picoult |
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b39dbd6
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When this is over...we will got to the rainforest, or a beach as white as bone. We will eat grapes from the vine, we will swim with sea turtles, we will walk miles on cobblestone streets. We will laugh and talk and confess. We will.
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Jodi Picoult |
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8787193
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so i do what i do best. i move in the opposite direction.
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Jodi Picoult |
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b6b6ce4
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I was starting to see that what looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.
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understanding
life
truth
garbage
crisis
yourself
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Jodi Picoult |
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473a9dc
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I could not remember my first kiss, but I could have told you Charlotte would be my last.
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Jodi Picoult |
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aab9f40
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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.
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humor
life
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Jodi Picoult |
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110994c
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Do you know how, when you are on the verge of a breakdown, the world pounds in your ears; a rush of blood, of consequence? Do you now how it feels when the truth cuts your tongue to ribbons, and still you have to speak it?
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Jodi Picoult |
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394962a
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Houses are cellular walls; they keep our problems from bleeding into everyone else's.
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problems
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Jodi Picoult |
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eb44531
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My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together? Bread, of course.
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Jodi Picoult |
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86b9318
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Grandmothers in Botswana tell their children that if you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, you must go together.
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Jodi Picoult |
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a7cbdc5
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The thing that most people didn't understand, if they weren't in his line if work, was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone forever. The difference was that the rape victim still had to go through the motions of being alive.
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rape
tenth-circle
sexual-assault
victim
survivor
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Jodi Picoult |
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4211849
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There are so many ways to betray someone. You can whisper behind his back. You can deceive him on purpose. You can deliver him into the hands of his enemy, when he trusts you. You can break a promise. The question is, if you do any of those things, are you also betraying yourself?
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Jodi Picoult |
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9d59738
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Jacob like a totally normal young man. He's clearly intelligent. But having his day disrupted probably makes him feel the same way I would if I was suddenly told to bungee off the top of the Sears Tower.
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Jodi Picoult |
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7aca668
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What could it be like to find out, in a matter of minutes, that the person you believed the sun rose and set on was not the person you'd thought?
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Jodi Picoult |
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afee75f
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Could it be as simple as that? Could love be not grand gestures or empty vows, not promises meant to be broken, but instead a paper trail of forgiveness? A line of crumbs made of memories, to lead you back to the person who was waiting?
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Jodi Picoult |
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3fde918
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Doctors put a wall up between themselves and their patients; nurses broke it down.
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nurses
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Jodi Picoult |
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423d716
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I imagine how cool it would be if all small talk wasn't lies.
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Jodi Picoult |
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df6a989
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In the space between yes and no, there is a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; it's the legroom for the lies you will tell yourself in the future.
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future
past
leave-behind
yes
path
no
decisions
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Jodi Picoult |
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da43b97
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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?"
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Jodi Picoult |
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0cadcfd
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The apple . . . came before Adam and Eve in the story of creation. It had to have been there at least three years because that's how long it takes for a new tree to bear fruit.
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Jodi Picoult |
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97789a5
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Love is not an equation... It is not a contract, and it's not a happy ending. It is the slate under the chalk and the ground buildings rise from and the oxygen in the air.
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Jodi Picoult |
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e35bac5
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You're unwilling to go out on a limb because it just might break underneath you.
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Jodi Picoult |
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c845dd7
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Wheather it is conscious or not, you eventually make the decision to divide your life in half - before and after - with loss being that tight bubble in the middle. You can move around in spite of it; you can laugh and smile and carry on with your life, but all it takes is one slow range of motion, a doubling over, to be fully aware of the empty space at your center.
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Jodi Picoult |
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4e3aa38
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Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation., and to others, like a pearl.
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Jodi Picoult |
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831d067
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You can't hate someone until you know what it might be like to love them.
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love
like
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Jodi Picoult |
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935081e
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You say you don't see color...but that's all you see. You're so hyperaware of it, and of trying to look like you aren't prejudiced, you can't even understand that when you say race doesn't matter all I hear is you dismissing what I've felt, what I've lived, what it's like to be put down because of the color of my skin.
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Jodi Picoult |
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00c6ba5
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True love can break the most powerful curse
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Jodi Picoult |
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322253f
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People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. --NELSON MANDELA, LONG WALK TO FREEDOM
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Jodi Picoult |
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d8b7bf6
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You don't look at another person's plate to see if they have more than you. You look to see if they have enough.
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Jodi Picoult |
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e0f8aea
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I've met so many parents of the kids who are on the low end of the autism spectrum, kids who are diametrically opposed to Jacob, with his Asperger's. They tell me I'm lucky to have a son who's verbal, who is blisteringly intelligent, who can take apart the broken microwave and have it working again an hour later. They think there is no greater hell than having a son who is locked in his own world, unaware that there's a wider one to explore..
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aspergers-syndrome
disability
autism
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Jodi Picoult |
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fe251b1
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i'm sure i'm worth a lot more dead than alive
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Jodi Picoult |
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e047006
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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.
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motherhood
parenting
children
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Jodi Picoult |
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2004cd4
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Kid says to me, "You play baseball? What position? Left out?" and gets a big laugh from the rest of the class. Kid is only one person out of 6.792 billion humans on this planet. This planet is only one-eighth of the solar system, whose sun is one of two billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Put it that way, the comment loses it's importance."
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Jodi Picoult |
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0515ea8
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She understood what it was like to stand right in front of people you loved, even though they could not see you.
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Jodi Picoult |
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7ce7e1f
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A place like this wears down everything, and tolerance is no exception. In here, coexistence passes for forgiveness. You do not learn to like something you abhor; you come to live with it...You live and let live, and eventually that becomes enough.
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Jodi Picoult |
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9793529
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Believe me, Being gay is not a choice. Noone would choose to make life harder than it has to be.
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Jodi Picoult |
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6059351
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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.
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Jodi Picoult |
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aaaa1fb
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Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.
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parenthood
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Jodi Picoult |
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9987ca5
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A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead.
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life
truth
taste
lie
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Jodi Picoult |
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ab700ba
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Engaging with haters is like rearranging pictures on the Titanic. What's the point?
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Jodi Picoult |
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44df336
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There is no cosmic scale on which you can weigh your actions; you learn too late what choices ruin the fragile balance.
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Jodi Picoult |
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541ff21
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Stories are all around us, caught in the throats of the strangers you walk past and scrawled on the pages of locked diaries. They're in love letters that were never sent and between the lines of every conversation ever spoken. Just because your story's not written down doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
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Jodi Picoult |
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a25108f
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Prejudice goes both ways, you know. There are people who suffer from it, and there are people who profit from it.
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Jodi Picoult |
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b76e571
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We are all drowning slowly in the tide of our opinions, oblivious that we are taking on water every time we open our mouths.
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Jodi Picoult |