Jodi Picoult
I cannot admit this out loud. In the first place, we are expected to be supermoms these days, instead of admitting that we have flaws. It is tempting to believe that all mothers wake up feeling fresh every morning, never raise their voices, only cook with organic food, and are equally at ease with the CEO and the PTA.Collection: Mother
never trust a man who wears a pinkie ring. . . the only jewelry a guy should wear is a wedding band or a super bowl ringCollection: Men
It was like trying to bail out an ocean of water with a teaspoon.Collection: Regret
Scars are just a treasure map for pain you've buried too deep to remember.Collection: Pain
The first time someone I loved left me behind...I didn't know how my family would balance. We had been such a sturdy little end table, four solid legs. I was sure we would now be off-kilter, always unstable. Until one day I looked more closely, and realized that we had simply become a stool.Collection: Balance
That's because you've never been one. You haven't spent years wearing someone else's clothes, taking someone else's name, living in someone else's houses, and working someone else's job to fit in. And if you don't sell out, then you run away... proving you're the Gypsy they said you were all along.Collection: Running
I didn't think i could possibly love another baby as much as I loved the one I'd already had," I continue. "But the strangest thing happened when I held you for the first time. It was like my heart suddenly unfolded. Like there was this secret space I didn't even know existed, and there was room for both of you." I stare at her. "Once my feelings were stretched like that, there was no going back. Without you, it just would have felt empty.Collection: Baby
There's an honesty to the wolf world that is liberating. There's no diplomacy, no decorum. You tell your enemy you hate him; you show your admiration by confessing the truth. That directness doesn't work with humans, who are masters of subterfuge. Does this dress make me look fat? Do you really love me? Did you miss me? When a person asks this, she doesn't want to know the real answer. She wants you to lie to her. After two years of living with wolves, I had forgotten how many lies it takes to build a relationship.Collection: Honesty
I wonder if what makes a family a family isn't doing everything right all the time but, instead, giving a second chance to the people you love who do things wrong.Collection: Second Chance
Because hate's just the flip side of love. Like heads and tails on a dime. If you don't know what it feels like to love someone, how would you know what hate is? One can't exist without the other.Collection: Hate
When someone loves you up one side and down the other like that, you make every effort to stick around.Collection: Love You
Love makes life a little brighterCollection: Littles
I think that when you live in a world with limits... when you've met everyone and seem everything you're going to see - you lose the hope that something extraordinary will happen in your lifeCollection: Thinking
I think her flaws make me love her even more. She's not perfect, but she's perfect to meCollection: Thinking
Here's what no one ever tells you about love: it hurts, having your heart brokenCollection: Hurt
Leave it to a man to mess things upCollection: Men
I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy endingCollection: Real
My teacher in first grade said that long ago people used to believe all kinds of things, because they didn't know any better. Like you shouldn't take a bath, because it could make you sick. And then someone saw germs under a microscope and started to think differently. You can believe something really hard, and still be wrong. (Faith White)Collection: Teacher
It took me a lifetime to realizethings don't get lost if they don't have value- you don't miss what you don't care about.Collection: Missing
Lately, I have been having nightmares, where I'm cut into so many pieces that there isn't enough of me to be put back together.Collection: Cutting
I'm grateful for my children, who are slowly emerging to become their own wonderful, interesting, compassionate young adults - which makes me believe that along the way I must have done something right.Collection: Children
No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back.Collection: Mother
Close a door, and you'd still feel a breeze through the window.Collection: Doors
Three months ago, if you asked me, I would have told you that if you really loved someone, you’d let them go. But now I look at you, and I dreamed about Maggie, and I see that I’ve been wrong. If you really love someone, Allie, I think you have to take them back.Collection: True Love
If you were drifting with a thousand other people, could you really still say you were lost?Collection: People
When the news you don't want to hear is looming before you like Everest, two things can happen. Tragedy can run you through like a sword, or it can become your backbone. Either you fall apart and sob, or you say, 'Right. What's next?Collection: Running
Logical thinking keeps you from wasting time worrying, or hoping. It prevents disappointment. Imagination, on the other hand, only gets you hyped up over things that will never realistically happen.Collection: Disappointment
If you choose to be looking for something, you'd better be ready for whatever it is you are find. Because it may not be what you've been expecting.Collection: May
What I want, more than anything, is to turn back time a little. To become the kid I used to be, who believed whatever my mother said was one hundred percent true and right without looking hard enough to see the hairline crack.Collection: Mother
I’d much rather pretend I’m somewhere else, and any time I open the pages of a book, that happens.Collection: Book
Doing the right thing for someone else occasionally means doing something that feels wrong to you.Collection: Mean
Bleeding heart, he’d called her. Well. He should know. He’d been the first to rip it to pieces.Collection: Rip
My favorite part of any event is a Q&A. I do get asked a lot of the same questions but every now and then someone surprises me - and I LOVE that.Collection: Events
you're not a bad person because you want to be yourself.Collection: Being Yourself
The desperate usually succeed because they have nothing to lose.Collection: Succeed
Lies were only as strong as the suckers that believed them.Collection: Strong
Dylan Jerome," the lawyer admits, "wanted to sue God for not caring enough about him.Collection: Caring
Summertime, I think, is a collective unconscious. We all remember the notes that made up the song of the ice cream man; we all know what it feels like to brand our thighs on a playground slide that's heated up like a knife in a fire; we all have lain on our backs with our eyes closed and our hearts beating across the surface of our lids, hoping that this day will stretch just a little longer than the last one, when in fact it's all going in the other direction.Collection: Song
Listen,” she said. “I may not be what you want right now, but I’m all you’ve got.Collection: May
The problem isn’t with rock lyrics, it’s with the fabric of this society itself.Collection: Rocks
Since it had gotten so quiet in the room that you could hear the sound of your own doubts.Collection: Doubt
People had figured out all sorts of ways to make things seem different than they truly were.Collection: People
He knew that there was a difference between something that makes you happy and something that doesn’t make you unhappy. The trick was convincing yourself these were one and the same.Collection: Convincing Yourself
Peter was, simply, what a person would look like if you boiled down the most raw emotions and filtered them of any social contract. If you hurt, cry. If you rage, strike out. If you hope, get ready for a disappointment.Collection: Hurt
What does it feel like?” he asked. “What does what feel like?” Peter thought for a moment. “Being at the top.” Josie reached across him for another packet of material and fed it into the stapler. She did three of these, and Peter was certain that she was going to ignore him, but then she spoke. “Like if you take one wrong step,” she said, “you’re going to fall.Collection: Fall
I felt a splinter of guilt wedge into my heart. Charlotte had hurt me; in return, I'd hurt Rob. Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late we've wounded the people we're trying to protect.Collection: Hurt
Maybe mothers - consciously or subconsciously - repelled their daughters in different ways.Collection: Daughter
Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they don't want their kids... but when you look more closely, you realize that they're doing those kids a favor. They're just trying to give them a better life.Collection: Mom
It felt like I'd been living underground, and for a moment, I'd been given this glimpse of the sky. Once you've seen that, how can you go back where you came from?Collection: Sky