Jodi Picoult
But will you miss me? More importantly - will I miss you? Does either one of us really want to hear the answer to that question?Collection: Missing
Africa - You can see a sunset and believe you have witnessed the Hand of God. You watch the slope lope of a lioness and forget to breathe. You marvel at the tripod of a giraffe bent to water. In Africa, there are iridescent blues on the wings of birds that you do not see anywhere else in nature. In Africa, in the midday heart, you can see blisters in the atmosphere. When you are in Africa, you feel primordial, rocked in the cradle of the world.Collection: Believe
You can’t undo something that’s happened; you can’t take back a word that’s already been said out loud.Collection: Loud
Nobody wants to admit to this, but bad things will keep on happening. Maybe that's beause it's all a chain, and a long time ago someone did the first bad thing, and that led someone else to do another bad thing, and so on. You know, like that game where you whisper a sentence into someone's ear, and that person whispers it to someone else, and it all comes out wrong in the end. But then again, maybe bad things happen because it's the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like.Collection: Games
There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook 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.Collection: Time
I don't believe in God. But sitting there, in a room full of those who feel otherwise, I realize that I do believe in people. In their strength to help each other, and to thrive in spite of the odds, I believe that the extraordinary trumps the ordinary, any day. I believe that having something to hope for -- even if it's just a better tomorrow -- is the most powerful drug on this planet.Collection: Powerful
You'd think someone who'd been to medical school would be able to hear through a stethoscope that somebody was empty inside.Collection: School
If you've lived through it, you already know there are no words that will ever come close to describing it, and if you didn't - you will never understand.Collection: Describing
You know someone's right for you when the things they don't have to say are even more important than the things they do.Collection: Relationship
You didn't get past something like that, you go through it -- and for that reason alone, I understood more about her than she ever would have guessed.Collection: Depression
[I] don't 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.Collection: Hurt
It is a remarkable question- Do all the wonderful things happen when we are not aware of them?Collection: Wonderful
Sometimes, all it takes to become human again is someone who can see you that way, no matter how you present on the surface.Collection: Matter
Sometimes we find ourselves walking through life blindfolded, and we try to deny that we're the ones who securely tied the knot.Collection: Ignorance
There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. We tell ourselves that it's the right thing to do, the altruistic thing to do. It's far easier than telling ourselves the truth.Collection: Would Be
Shelby believed that love was like a solar eclipse - breathtakingly beautiful, absorbing, and capable of rendering you blind. She had not necessarily gone out of her way to avoid a relationship, but she hadn't wanted on either. It was called falling in love for a reason - because, inevitably, you crashed at the bottom.Collection: Beautiful
The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us to sleep at night--because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law.Collection: Sleep
The scariest thing in the world is thinking someone you love is going to die.Collection: Love Is
The legal system works really well, if you communicate a certain way. But if you don't, it all goes to Hell in a handbasket really quickly.Collection: Legal System
Hopefully, more and more people will come to understand that a child who's "different from" is not one who is "lesser than."Collection: Children
To me, a good event is governed by the audience.Collection: Events
Everyone still deserves to have their say.Collection: Stills
Many people have a novel inside them, but most don't bother to get it out.Collection: People
When your existence is hell, death must be heaven.Collection: Heaven
A duck walks into a bar and the bartender asks, what'll it be? The duck doesn't answer because it's a duck.Collection: Ducks
Maybe Fate isn't the pond you swim in but the fisherman floating on top of it, letting you run the line wild until you are weary enough to be reeled back in.Collection: Running
It's because of libraries that books like mine get recommended to book clubs and avid readers, who in turn pass them onto others looking to be whisked away from the world for a little while...and perhaps to learn a bit about themselves in the process.Collection: Book
You can argue that it's a different world now than the one when Matthew Shepard was killed, but there is a subtle difference between tolerance and acceptance. It's the distance between moving into the cul-de-sac and having your next door neighbor trust you to keep an eye on her preschool daughter for a few minutes while she runs out to the post office. It's the chasm between being invited to a colleague's wedding with your same-sex partner and being able to slow-dance without the other guests whispering.Collection: Daughter
Having a fantasy come true doesn't always mean it will be permanent.Collection: Mean
I know better than most people that a criminal isn't always a thug in a black leather jacket with a big brand on his forehead to warn us away. Criminals sit next to us on the bus. They pack our groceries and cash our paychecks for us and teach our children. They look no different from you or me. And that's why they get away with it.Collection: Children
How could he convey to someone who'd never even met her the way she always smelled like rain, or how his stomach knotted up every time he saw her shake loose her hair from its braid? How could he describe how it felt when she finished his sentences, turnec the mug they were sharing so that her mouth landed where his had been? How did he explain the way they could be in a locker room, or underwater, or in the piney woods of Maine, bus as long as Em was with him, he was at home?Collection: Rain
I, um, I have this problem. I broke up with my boyfriend, you see. And I'm pretty upset about it, so I wanted to talk to my best friend. [...] The thing is, they're both you.Collection: Love
When you don't fit in, you become superhuman. You can feel everyone else's eyes on you, stuck like Velcro. You can hear a whisper about you from a mile away. You can disappear, even when it looks like you're still standing right there. You can scream, and nobody hears a sound. You become the mutant who fell into the vat of acid, the Joker who can't remove his mask, the bionic man who's missing all his limbs and none of his heart. You are the thing that used to be normal, but that was so long ago, you can't even remember what it was like.Collection: Heart
Q: How would you like your eggs in the morning? A: UnfertilizedCollection: Morning
I know you love me. The question is, how much?Collection: I Know You Love Me
I adore the way he looks at me sometimes, as if love is a quantity he cannot measure scientifically, because it multiplies too quickly.Collection: Love Is
You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across?Collection: Art
Her hands quieted. "Yeah. Because even if the law says that no one is responsible for anyone else, helping someone who needs it is the right thing to do." I sat down beside her, close enough that the skin of her arm hummed right next to mine. "You really believe that?" She looked down at her lap "Yeah." Then how," I asked, "can you walk away from me?Collection: Believe
You can touch everything and be connected to nothing.Collection: Connected
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?Collection: Sister
Ross held her face between his hands and kissed her. He tasted doubt on her tongue and pain on the roof of her mouth. He swallowed these, and drank again. Consumed, she had no choice but to see how empty he was inside, and how, sip by sip, she filled him.Collection: Pain
It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened when you let yourself get close to someone, when you started to believe they loved you: you'd be disappointed. Depend on someone, and you might as well admit you're going to be crushed, because when you really needed them, they wouldn't be there. Either that, or you'd confide in them and you added to their problems. All you ever really had was yourself, and that sort of sucked if you were less than reliable.Collection: Disappointment
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.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Dad
And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt.Collection: Doubt
Your hand fits mine like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzleCollection: Jigsaw Puzzles
the letters are mixed up. U and I should be together.Collection: Together
Love is not a because, it's a no matter what.Collection: Love
if you tell yourself you feel fine, you will.Collection: Positive