|
d2a91a1
|
Remember when you were a little kid and you'd fall asleep in the car? And someone would carry you out and put you into bed, so that when you woke up in the morning, you knew automatically you were home again? That's what I think it's like to die.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
9b4bd32
|
There is a gulf as wide as an ocean between should and want, and I am drowning in it.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
f0cc731
|
when you want something so desperately, you shake with the need for it. you tell yourself that you don't need more than one sip, because it's just the taste you crave, and once it's on your tongue you will be able to make it last alifetime. you dream of it at night. you see a thousand mile-high obstacles between where you stand and what you want, and you convince yourself you have the power to hurdle them. you tell yourself this even when, ..
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
5afc44a
|
In my family, we seem to have a tortured history of not saying what we ought to and not meaning what we do.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
465f6a0
|
That the sum of a man's life was not where he wound up but in the details that brought him there.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
372e6c2
|
If words had flavors, hers would be bitter almonds and coffee grounds.
|
|
flavor
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
4400f8a
|
Summertime, I think, is a collective unconscious. We all remember the notes that made up the song of the ice cream man; we all know what it feels like to brand our thighs on a playground slide that's heated up like a knife in a fire; we all have lain on our backs with our eyes closed and our hearts beating across the surface of our lids, hoping that this day will stretch just a little longer than the last one, when in fact it's all going in..
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
c76d69e
|
You came back fighting and furious at me. You told me you'd been looking for mermaids, and I interrupted you. [...] I said that next time, you had to take me with you." "Was there a next time?" "Well, you tell me, you don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?"
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
dd25cef
|
I've always been able to see you," I say. "It's a rather lovely view."
|
|
oliver
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
f220fb4
|
But that's what love is, isn't it? When it hurts you more to see someone suffer than it does to take the pain away?
|
|
sorrow
love
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
e71b00e
|
There are so many ways a family can unravel. All it takes is a tiny slash of selfishness, a rip of greed, a puncture of bad luck. And yet, woven tightly, family can be the strongest bond imaginable.
|
|
love
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
35d65d7
|
We believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
420f6fb
|
I realize how quickly lies compound. They cover like a coat of paint, one on top of the other, until you cannot remember what color you started with.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
18cd604
|
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.
|
|
trust
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
1be70a3
|
Sometimes, I think my whole life has been about holding onto you.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
da94164
|
memory is linked to strong emotion, and that negative moments are like scribbling with permanent marker on the wall of the brain. But there's a fine line between a negative moment and a traumatic one. Negative moments get remembered. Traumatic ones get forgotten, or so warped that they are unrecognizable,
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
f537e1a
|
Only the liar knows he's lying
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
2022cbd
|
There's a cliff at the end point of a person's life; most us of peer over the edge of it, hanging on. That's why, when someone chooses to let go, it's so dramatically visible. The body will seem almost transparent. The eys will be looking at something the rest of us can't see.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
ad095a0
|
I'm gonna miss you," Brianna says. "I'm gonna miss you too, baby," Angelo murmurs. For Pete's sake. It's not like she's leaving on a trip around the world. She's only headed to homeroom."
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
f1619a5
|
Just when you think you've got your life by the reins, that's when it's most likely to run away with you.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
8d56efe
|
There are some things, I think, you're btter off not remembering.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
4c70f14
|
Don't pay back in kind, pay back in kindness. If someone does wrong by you, do right by them.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
84e0e36
|
I wonder if there's a difference between being a dutiful mother and being a good mother.' There is,' I said, and Charlotte looked up at me, expectant. Even if I couldn't articulate the difference as an adult, as a child I had felt it. I thought for a moment. 'A dutiful mother is someone who follows every step her child makes,' I said. And a good mother?' I lifted my gaze to Charlotte's. 'Is someone whose child wants to follow .
|
|
good-mother
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
9772775
|
What if, ladies and gentlemen, today I told you that anyone here who was born on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday was free to leave right now? Also, they'd be given the most central parking spots in the city, and the biggest houses. They would get job interviews before others who were born later in the week, and they'd be taken first at the doctor's office, no matter how many patients were waiting in line. If you were born from Thursday to S..
|
|
white-privilege
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
df1d449
|
Everyone has a story; everyone hides his past as a means of self-preservation. Some just do it better, and more thoroughly, than others.
|
|
story
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
a71b53e
|
Time is an optical illusion-- never quite as solid or strong as we think it is.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
9142108
|
It still hurts," she whispered. "Even when you're doing it for someone else, that doesn't stop your ribs from getting cracked, or your wrist swelling, or your cuts from bleeding."
|
|
sacrifice
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
075c642
|
Coal, with time and heat and pressure, will always become a diamond. But if you were freezing to death, which would you consider the gem?
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
b35e219
|
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.
|
|
people
love
sad-truth
wound
shots
protect
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
b5361b6
|
Witness testimony is always flawed. It's better than circumstantial evidence, sure, but people aren't camcorders; they don't record every action and reaction, and the very act of remembering involves chosing words, actions and images. In other words, any witness who was supposed to be giving a court facts is really just giving them a version of fiction.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
ca6eae1
|
The first time she kissed me, I truly thought I'd had an aneurysm - my pulse was thundering so loud and my senses were exploding. This, I remember thinking, the only word I could hold on to in a sea of feelings.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
8f67582
|
Sometimes Chris wished he could sneak a peek at the back of the book, so to speak, and see how it was all going to turn out, so that he wouldn't have to bother going through the motions.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
a5dc531
|
Crazy girls did this, girls who walked like zombies through YA novels. But. Trixie felt the sting of the skin as it split, the sweet welling rise of blood. It hurt, though not as much as everything else idd.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
29290e4
|
What one person takes away from a book might be very different from what the next person takes away -- almost as if the story is altered depending on who's reading, where, and when. But then, maybe all books are like that -- a little different each time they are opened. The real question is who's doing the changing: the story, or the reader.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
0926b63
|
I imagined what it would be like to hold a butterfly in your hands something bejeweled and treasured and to know that despite your devotion it was dying by degrees.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
0595d42
|
She has never been a pretty crier. She sobbed the way she did everything else - with passion and excess. That she had managed to keep it inside her this long was astounding to James. He thought of pushing open the half-closed door and kneeling before his wife, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and helping her upstairs. He raised his hand, stroking the wood of the door, planning to say something to calm her. But what wisdom could he off..
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
86d27ce
|
There's no way to convince her that just because you put half. planet between you and someone else, you can't drive that person out of your thoughts. Believe me. I've tried.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
d93eee8
|
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?
|
|
marriage
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
e686e69
|
How many times would I throw this away before I realized it was what I had been looking for all along?
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
da51564
|
Why are you doing this to yourself? When something bad happens, why do you have to pick at it until it bleeds all over again?
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
3010cbf
|
History could hover, like a faint perfume or a memory stamped on the back of one's eyelids.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
994ec05
|
The world is a place where the extraordinary can sit just beside the ordinary with the thinnest of boundaries; that even in environments inhospitable to man, all sort of entities might thrive.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
aa6b177
|
There was no black or white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. People were just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster.
|
|
murder
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
5e5ea3b
|
There is a magic to intimacy, a world built of sighs and skin that is thicker than brick, stronger than iron. There is only you, and him, so impossibly close that nothing can come between. Not the enemy, not your allies. In this safe haven, in this hallowed place and time, I could even ask the questions whose answers I feared.
|
|
intimacy
|
Jodi Picoult |