Quotes by Jodi Picoult

I wonder how much the general population of this country know that the legal system has far more to do with playing a good hand of poker than it does with justice.

every now and then, i worry about people in the third world countries. and then i figure if they all started having sex, their lives would be considerably brighter.

words are like nets - we hope theyll cover what we mean, but we know they cant possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.

Sometimes parents dont find what theyre looking for it their child, so they plant seeds for what theyd like to grow there instead. Ive 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 daughters hair into a bun and watched from the wings of the stage. We are not, as youd 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 weve already lived.

Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman whod sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, whod cried with me over boyfriends, whod clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother?Both, I realized. Being a parent wasnt just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they dont want their kids... but when you look more closely, you realize that theyre doing those kids a favor. Theyre just trying to give them a better life.

And that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through.

It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason youd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didnt have to look for, didnt have to prove anything to, didnt have to worry about losing. Which is why, when it happened, it hurt so badly.

Babies dont come with instruction booklets. Youd learn the same way we all do -- youd read up on dinosaurs, youd Google backhoes and skidders. And you dont need a penis to go buy a baseball glove.

We pretend that we know our children, because its easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. Its far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize she has the curves of a young woman; its safer to say youre a good parent who has all the right conversations about drugs and sex than to acknowledge there are a thousand things she would never tell you.

[I] dont 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.

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.

I used to think Id be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyway.

Children are supposed to go to school, play on swing sets, skin their knees.

Logically, I understand that it wasnt Edwards fault my family fell apart after he left. But when youre eleven years old, you dont give a flip about logic. You just really miss holding your big brothers hand.

It was easier for girls. They could say This hurts, or I don’t like how this feels, and have the complaint be socially acceptable. Boys, though, didn’t speak that language. They didn’t learn it as children and they didn’t manage to pick it up as adults, either.

Even if we have grown so far apart that we dont recognize each other when we pass, we have this life, this block of time, and what do you think about that?

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?

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 wasnt 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 youd been missing.

The English judged a person so that theyd be justified in casting her out. The Amish judged a person so that theyd be justified in welcoming her back. Where Im from, if someone is accused of sinning, its not so that others can place blame. Its so that the person can make amends and move on.