Jodi Picoult

"My Mother: She is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her."

- Jodi Picoult

"The best place to cry is on a mother’s arms."

- Jodi Picoult

"You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love in spite of the fact that they're not."

- Jodi Picoult

"You don't love someone because they're perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they're not."

- Jodi Picoult

"I close my eyes, thinking that there is nothing like an embrace after an absence, nothing like fitting my face into the curve of his shoulder and filling my lungs with the scent of him."

- Jodi Picoult

"You don’t love someone because they’re perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they’re not."

- Jodi Picoult

"You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not."

- Jodi Picoult

"You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride."

- Jodi Picoult

"You don't love someone because they're perfect; you love them in spite of the fact that they're not."

- Jodi Picoult

"I believe in love. I think it just hits you and pulls the rug out from underneath you and, like a baby, demands your attention every minute of the day."

- Jodi Picoult

"“The best place to cry is on a mother’s arms.”"

- Jodi Picoult

"Sometimes we make mistakes in love because we see the best in people, not the reality."

- Jodi Picoult

"You don’t love someone because they’re perfect. You love them in spite of the fact they’re not."

- Jodi Picoult

"Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood - finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without."

- Jodi Picoult

"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 who'd sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who'd cried with me over boyfriends, who'd clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother? Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life."

- Jodi Picoult

"There should be a statute of limitation on grief."

- Jodi Picoult

"Anxiety is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but doesn’t get you very far."

- Jodi Picoult

"Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far."

- Jodi Picoult

"Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you very far."

- Jodi Picoult

"I think the 'New York Times' reviews overall tend to overlook popular fiction, whether you're a man, woman, white, black, purple or pink. I think there are a lot of readers who would like to see reviews that belong in the range of commercial fiction."

- Jodi Picoult

""Having a daughter makes you see things in a different light… Through her eyes, through her thoughts, and through her dreams… You finally get what human being is all about.""

- Jodi Picoult

"I don’t just hear music. I see it. I taste it. I feel it"

- Jodi Picoult

"There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rule book that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it."

- Jodi Picoult

"The doctors may be mapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable."

- Jodi Picoult

"The best place to cry is on a mother's arms."

- Jodi Picoult

"There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations"

- Jodi Picoult

"It’s about a girl who is on the cusp of becoming someone. A girl who may not know what she wants right now, and she may not know who she is right now, but who deserves the chance to find out."

- Jodi Picoult

"If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?"

- Jodi Picoult

"She is the person I ran to when I got my period; the one who helped me knit back together my first broken heart; the hand I would reach for in the middle of the night when I could no longer remember which side our father parted his hair on, or what it sounded like when our mother laughed. No matter what she is now, before all that, she was my built-in best friend."

- Jodi Picoult

"Siblings share not only genes and memories but also an unbreakable bond that extends beyond time and space."

- Jodi Picoult

"The fact that you worry about being a good teacher, means that you already are one."

- Jodi Picoult

"My mother: She is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her."

- Jodi Picoult

"My mother, she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her."

- Jodi Picoult

"My Mother: She is beautiful, softened at the edge, and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her."

- Jodi Picoult

"My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her."

- Jodi Picoult

"Parents aren’t the people you come from. They’re the people you want to be, when you grow up."

- Jodi Picoult

""My mother, she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.""

- Jodi Picoult

"When I was little I bragged about my firefighting father: my father would go to heaven, because if he went to hell he would put out all the fires."

- Jodi Picoult

"Motherhood is a Sisyphean task. You finish sewing one seam shut, and another rips open. I have come to believe that this life I’m wearing will never really fit."

- Jodi Picoult

"The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means you already are one."

- Jodi Picoult

"You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page"

- Jodi Picoult

"Once you sign on to be a mother, 24/7 is the only shift they offer."

- Jodi Picoult

"If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?"

- Jodi Picoult

"If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."

- Jodi Picoult

"Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."

- Jodi Picoult

"I always hated when my scars started to fade because as long as I could still see them, I knew why I was hurting."

- Jodi Picoult

"Things that break— be they bones, hearts, or promises— can be put back together but will never really be whole."

- Jodi Picoult

"Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you’d been before the fall."

- Jodi Picoult

"Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines."

- Jodi Picoult

"Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."

- Jodi Picoult

"You may not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page."

- Jodi Picoult

"Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look."

- Jodi Picoult

""Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.""

- Jodi Picoult

"The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance."

- Jodi Picoult

"The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance."

- Jodi Picoult

"There’s always going to be bad stuff out there. But here’s the amazing thing light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can’t stick the dark into the light."

- Jodi Picoult

"The human capacity for burden is like bamboo - far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance."

- Jodi Picoult

"The human capacity for burden is like bamboo—far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance."

- Jodi Picoult

"The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance."

- Jodi Picoult

"The human capacity for burden is like bamboo — far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance."

- Jodi Picoult

"The human capacity for burden is like bamboo—far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance."

- Jodi Picoult

"I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it."

- Jodi Picoult

"When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't."

- Jodi Picoult

"When you’re different, sometimes you don’t see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn’t."

- Jodi Picoult

"The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one."

- Jodi Picoult

"The damage was permanent; there would always be scars. But even the angriest scars faded over time until it was difficult to see them written on the skin at all, and the only thing that remained was the memory of how painful it had been."

- Jodi Picoult

"Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future'."

- Jodi Picoult

"It's about a girl who is on the cusp of becoming someone.. A girl who may not know what she wants right now, and she may not know who she is right now, but who deserves the chance to find out."

- Jodi Picoult

"(24/7) once you sign on to be a mother, that’s the only shift they offer."

- Jodi Picoult

"(24/7) once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer."

- Jodi Picoult

"A very wise man once told me that you can’t look back – you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future."

- Jodi Picoult

"Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother?…I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who’d sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who’d cried with me over boyfriends, who’d clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother? Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn’t just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life."

- Jodi Picoult

"There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rule book that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays."

- Jodi Picoult

"Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you're young. But I don't think we make any fewer when we're grown up."

- Jodi Picoult

"Being a parent wasn’t just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life."

- Jodi Picoult

"Parents are not the people you come from. They are the people you want to be, when you grow up."

- Jodi Picoult

"Dear Mom, thanks for always being there for me, loving me, caring for me. No one can ever replace you in my heart."

- Jodi Picoult

"Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life."

- Jodi Picoult

"My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn't a social construct but an instinct."

- Jodi Picoult

"I woke up one morning thinking about wolves and realized that wolf packs function as families. Everyone has a role, and if you act within the parameters of your role, the whole pack succeeds, and when that falls apart, so does the pack."

- Jodi Picoult

"A very wise man once told me that you can’t look back — you just have to put the past behind you and find something better in your future."

- Jodi Picoult

"All I know is that I carried you for nine months. I fed you, I clothed you, I paid for your college education. Friending me on Facebook seems like a small thing to ask in return."

- Jodi Picoult

"You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page."

- Jodi Picoult

"“The doctors may be mapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable.”"

- Jodi Picoult