13a2055
|
The thing about a mom is that she's always there. She's the one who rubs your back when you have the flu, who manages to notice you have no clean underwear and does your wash for you, who stocks the refrigerator with all the foods you love without having to ask. The thing about a mom is that you never imagine taking care of her, instead of the other way around.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
82b9b54
|
He could stand pain, himself. He just couldn't stand hers.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
fab6122
|
The jury is supposed to be twelve peers, but technically that would mean every single person on the jury should have Asperger's syndrome, because then they'd really understand me.
|
|
jury
|
Jodi Picoult |
e552be2
|
The adhan," the father explained. "God is great; there is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." he looked up at me and smiled. "In Islam, we want the first words a child hears to be a prayer." It seemed absolutely fitting, give the miracle that every baby is. The differences between the Muslim father's request and the request made by Turk Bauer was like the difference between day and night. Between love and hate."
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
46e4e2b
|
There are all sorts of losses people suffer--from the small to the large. You can lose your 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 |
16c4670
|
Who would have imagine that the sound your life made as it disintegrated was total silence?
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
ff3b25a
|
Where did you go?" "To the end of the driveway," my mother says. "I was nine months pregnant; that was the maximum distance I could waddle without feeling as if my uterus was falling out." I wince. "Do you have to be quite so graphic?" "What would you like me to call it, Zoe? A fetal living room?"
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
f326565
|
A mother has nine months to get used to sharing the space where her heart is; for a father it comes on sudden, like a storm that changes the landscape forever.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
54119ec
|
Not everyone understands how you can spin two lassos at the same time, one of hope and one of grief.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
a61187e
|
When I was little, the great mystery to me was not how babies were made, but why?
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
b1c125e
|
because he believed that if you wanted to get rid of a hole, you filled it. He had not realized at the time that there were all sorts of filler that took up space, but had no substance. That made you feel just as empty.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
f789f41
|
I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician's assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don't vanish into thin air; that when you can't find someone, it's because you've been misdirected to look elsewhere.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
315e2af
|
The problem was, you couldn't have one without the other. There couldn't be a bad guy unless there was a good guy to create the standard. And there couldn't be a good guy until a bad guy showed just how far off the path he might stray.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
f6d3330
|
But there was a part of her that wondered what would happen if she let them all in on the secretthat some mornings, it was hard to get out of bed and put on someone else's smile; that she was standing on air, a fake who laughed at all the right jokes and whispered all the right gossip and attracted the right guy, a fake who had nearly forgotten what it felt like to be real...and who, when you got right down to it, didn't want to remember, b..
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
f855c85
|
How does someone go from thinking that if he cannot rescue, he must destroy? And do you blame him, or do you blame the folks who should have told him otherwise?
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
2d7fbb4
|
People had figured out all sorts of ways to make things seem different than they truly were.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
96bca3f
|
Fumbling in the dark, Josie reached underneath the frame of her bed for the plastic bag she'd stashed-her supply of sleeping pills. She was no better than any of the other stupid people in this world who thought if they pretended hard enough, they could make it so. She'd thought that death could be an answer, because she was too immature to realize it was the biggest question of all. Yesterday, she hadn't known what patterns blood could mak..
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
75d58e8
|
It's not my fault that my awesomeness intimidates people.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
48b33d1
|
Everyone wants their kid to grow up and go to Harvard or be a quarterback for the Patriots. No one ever looks at their baby and thinks, Oh, I hope my kid grows up and becomes a freak. I hope he gets to school every day and prays he won't catch anyone's attention. But you know what? Kids grow up like that every single day.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
965da74
|
You okay in there?" "No, I'm hanging from a closet rod." --
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
4133a71
|
When you are singled out for torture because of your faith, can religion still be a beacon?
|
|
religion
wwii
|
Jodi Picoult |
e12ed6a
|
I closed my eyes and curled my fists around the things I knew for sure: That a scallop has thirty-five eyes, all blue. That a tuna will suffocate if it ever stops swimming. That I was loved. That this time, it was not me who broke
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
24dcd6b
|
Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions.
|
|
reality
|
Jodi Picoult |
7c1b276
|
Because the more you changed, the less of you there was.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
8c19573
|
As it turned out, though, it was a lot easier to say that someone deserved to die for what they did than it was to take the responsibility to make that happen.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
c142358
|
Some people, they get down in a hole so deep they can't figure out what to hold on to.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
ce9796c
|
Imagine waking up one morning and finding a piece of yourself you didn't even know existed.
|
|
life
|
Jodi Picoult |
73dc8db
|
No, honestly, my mouth shouldn't be able to function unless my brain's engaged.
|
|
function
life
mouth
thing-to-ponder
truth
|
Jodi Picoult |
ae57792
|
Sometimes we don't know we're dreaming; we can't even fathom that we're asleep.
|
|
dream
|
Jodi Picoult |
26c8050
|
Maybe knowing where you belong is not equal to knowing who you are.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
0d40d58
|
How far can a person go... and still live with himself.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
9b63075
|
the relationship between people knot so easily, there needs to be a person skilled at working free the threads. Sometimes, though, the only way to extricate a tangle is to cut it out and start fresh.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
9c7954e
|
This is when I realize that Anna has already left the table, and more importantly, that nobody noticed.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
dbcbc7b
|
Isn't that what true romance is supposed to be about? Finding the person who's your soul mate. Someone you dream about at night.Someone whose name is on your lips when you wake up in the morning.
|
|
love
romance
young-adult
|
Jodi Picoult |
90993d2
|
Sometimes the hardest thing to hear is the truth.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
1952223
|
Wondering why white people named girl babies things like Hope and Faith and Patience - names they could never live up to - and black mothers called their daughters Mercy, Deliverance, Salvation - crosses they'd always have to bear.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
740bd29
|
A woman isn't all that different from a bonfire. A fire's a beautiful thing, right? Something you can't take your eyes off, when it's burning. If you can keep it contained, it'll throw light and heat for you. It's only when it gets out of control that you have to go on the offensive.
|
|
my-sister-s-keeper
woman
|
Jodi Picoult |
835aca9
|
Jacob's room is the place entropy goes to die.
|
|
entropy
|
Jodi Picoult |
2d1ea10
|
Lawyers were notorious for finding cases in the most unlikely places, especially ones with huge potential damagers awards.
|
|
lawyers
|
Jodi Picoult |
3dd8849
|
If you say the same words over and over, do they become so bleached that there's no color left in them?
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
25cabb9
|
When you are attracted to people, it's because of the details. Their kindness. Their eyes. The fact that they can get you to laugh when you need it the most.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
8ef25e4
|
We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
c77d565
|
And sometimes, he was less lucid. He'd run around his cell like a caged animal; he'd rock back and forth; he'd swing from topic to topic as if it was the only way to cross the jungle of his thoughts.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |
172f4c9
|
I could think whatever I wanted to, but realized that any promises I made myself were destined to be broken.
|
|
|
Jodi Picoult |