Jodi Picoult
Losing Chloe had been like reading a wonderfulook only to realize that all the pages past a certain point were blank.Collection: Reading
How could you beat an enemy you couldn't see?Collection: Enemy
And in general, the residents of the town wondered why they all felt hollow just beneath the throat, the result of missing something they had never been able to name in the first place.Collection: Names
I wish I could tell him I understand: the higher you raise your hopes, the farther you have to fall.Collection: Fall
He is dark and quiet and completely different from me, which is exactly why I should put distance between us. But it is also the reason I find him so fascinating.Collection: Distance
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.Collection: Inspirational
He gently touched his mother's cheek, felt her sorrow slip over his fingertips.Collection: Mother
Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.Collection: Want
Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall.Collection: Fall
Life can change in an instant; don't be so worried about the future that you forget to celebrate what you have right now.Collection: Forget
This is what I like about photographs. They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect.Collection: Perfect
When you want something bad, you'll tell yourself a thousand lies.Collection: Lying
Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.Collection: Hero
They say that there are moments that open up your life like a walnut cracked, that change your point of view so that you never look at things the same way again.Collection: Views
For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.Collection: Memories
Happiness is what you choose to remember.Collection: Remember
The first person you fell in love with stole your heart. The first person you made love with stole your soul. And if these were one and the same, you were doomed.Collection: Heart
Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions.Collection: Eye
You can't look back - you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.Collection: Moving On
The ability to find sparks may be buried so deep in you that you stop believing there's a God. Until someone comes along, with so much light in her that you can't help but see your own, and when you're together,that light grows even brighter.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Art
Where you come from does matter -- but not nearly as much as where you are headed.Collection: Travel
I love getting fan mail. Often, as a writer, you never know what your readers think of a book... you get critical reviews and sales figures, but none of that is the same as knowing you've made a person stay up all night reading, or helped them have a good cry, or really touched their life.Collection: Book
A lot of the moms of autistic kids I met are so consumed with being their child's advocate that there's no room for anything else - least of all themselves. It's why so many marriages end in divorce, when a child is diagnosed on the spectrum.Collection: Mom
I haven't run out of ideas yet. Usually while I'm working on a book, I'm doing research for the next one!Collection: Running
Have a conversation with your family about your end-of-life wishes while you are healthy. No one wants to have that discussion... but if you do, you'll be giving your loved ones a tremendous gift, since they won't have to guess what your wishes would have been, and it takes the onus of responsibility off of them.Collection: Responsibility
Write a living will. And become an organ donor!Collection: Writing
Fiction allows for moral questioning, but through the back door. Personally, I like books that make you think - books you're still wondering about three days after you finish them; books you hand to a friend and say "Read this, so we can talk about it."Collection: Book
In Poland, for a while, my books all had cartoons on the cover. I trust my publishers in each country to know what works in their individual markets.Collection: Country
I am always consulted about covers, and give feedback, but I am also aware that what causes a customer to pick a book up off a shelf in the UK is very different from what causes a customer to pick a book up in the US.Collection: Book
I love meeting my readers - so the more I can talk to at one event the better!Collection: Events
The question I hate the most is "How did you DO it - write novels and raise your children simultaneously!" I mean, do MALE authors get asked that??Collection: Children
Maybe knowing where you belong is not equal to knowing who you are.Collection: Knowing Who You Are
You know, Sage, Jesus didn't tell us to forgive everyone. He said turn the other cheek, but only if you the one who was hit. Even the Lord's Prayer says it loud and clear: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Not others. What Jesus challenges us to do is to let go of the wrong done to you personally, not the wrong done to someone else. But most Christians incorrectly assume that this means that being a good christian means forgiving all sins, and the sinners.Collection: Christian
I try really hard to ask people to take a look at their bookshelves. Are there female writers on it? Gay writers? Writers of color? There should be.Collection: Gay
I don't want to tell people what to think. I'm the least qualified person in the world for that. If I'd go around pretending to be the expert on everything, I'd become Dan Brown, and I don't understand that. We all do our research if we're good writers, and we all work hard to get it right, but that doesn't mean we're experts in the field. The best we can do is challenge people to learn the facts themselves.Collection: Hard Work
You want to write something as good as what you've read.Collection: Writing
I don't believe in writer's block. Most of writer's block is having too much time on your hands. My mantra is that you can always edit a bad page; you can't edit a blank page.Collection: Block
To me gay rights is the last civil right that we have not granted in America and I think it's an enormous embarrassment.Collection: Gay
Any time you put on the mouthpiece of somebody that you're not, there's a professional responsibility to get it right. I did a great deal of research in both of those arenas.Collection: Responsibility
For me, every book is a journey - questioning a really difficult topic that most people don't want to talk about, much less write about. And that's what I need; that works for me as a writer.Collection: Book
As a child, what I was missing was so much bigger to me than what I had. My mother-mythic, imaginary-was a deity and a superhero and a comfort all at once. If only I'd had her, surely, she would have been the answer to every problem; if only I'd had her , she would have been the cure for everything that ever had gone wrong in my life.Collection: Mother
I can see myself now, she said. And I can see what I want to be, ten years from now. But I don't understand how I'm going to get from here to there.Collection: Years
Forgiveness is spiritual. Punishment is legal," Leo says. "They're not mutually exclusive.Collection: Spiritual
How could I not have seen this coming, when I looked into your eyes and vowed to be with you forever?Collection: Eye
Fiction is like that, once it is released into the world: contagious, persistent. Like the contents of Pandora's box, a story that's freely given can't be contained anymore. It becomes infectious, spreading from the person who created it to the person who listens, and passes it on.Collection: Fiction
Once, I asked my mom why stars shine. She said they were night-lights, so the angels could find their way around in Heaven. But when I asked my dad, he started talking about gas, and somehow I put it all together and figured that the food God served caused multiple trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night.Collection: Mom
Suddenly, I don't want to be this person anymore. I don't want to pretend I'm fooling the world when I'm not. I want someone else to have a plan for me, because I'm not doing a very good job myself.Collection: Jobs
How do you walk into someone's life again after twenty-eight years? How do you pick up, when you were too young to know where you left off.Collection: Years