01c. 1966 ADYou know how I get angry sometimes? That's because it's the only way I can still feel. And I need to test myself, to make sure I'm really here.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
02c. 1966 ADIt turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you're alone. It feels less like a wound and more like a poultice.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
03c. 1966 ADAt 17, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else's thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone accept you was as vital as oxygen. Adults, light years away from this, rolled their eyes and smirked and said, 'This too shall pass' - as if adolescence was a disease like chicken pox, something everyone recalled as a milk nuisance, completely forgetting how painful it had been at the time.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
04c. 1966 ADFrom that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest.Darkness, you know, is relative.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
05c. 1966 ADI don't understand why people never say what they mean. It's like the immigrants who come to a country and learn the language but are completely baffled by idioms. (Seriously, how could anyone who isn't a native English speaker 'get the picture,' so to speak, and not assume it has something to do with a photo or a painting?)Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
06c. 1966 ADShe suddenly remembered studying the brain in science class- how a steel rod pierced a man's skull, and he opened his mouth to speak Portuguese, a language he'd never studied. Maybe it would be like this, now, for Josie. Maybe her native tongue, from here on in, would be a string of lies.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
07c. 1966 ADI like the word ‘evil’. Scramble it a little and you will get ‘vile’ and ‘live’. ‘Good’, on the other hand, is just a command to ‘go do’.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
08c. 1966 ADIf you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase-not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been-what would you take?Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
09c. 1966 ADI want to believe there's a God. Because I sure as hell know there's a devil.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
10c. 1966 ADThis was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone...a security blanket, an ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always feel its presence like a swelling secret stone, and that way when she let go of the rage, she would not feel nearly as empty.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
11c. 1966 ADSometimes I think there's a beast that lives inside me, in the cavern that's where my heart should be, and every now and then it fills every last inch of my skin, so that I can't help but do something inappropriate. Its breath is full of lies; it smells of spite.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
12c. 1966 ADThe feeling that she was going to explode, that she was too big for her own skin.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
13c. 1966 ADIt's not because I don't want to hurt Delia's feelings. It's because when she is bruised, I'm the one who aches.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
14c. 1966 ADYou can't hate someone until you know what it might be like to love them.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
15c. 1966 ADAs Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter's behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
16c. 1966 ADYou cannot hate someone until you know what it might be like to love them.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
17c. 1966 ADShe wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
19c. 1966 ADSomething still exists as long as there's someone still around to remember it.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
20c. 1966 ADFor better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
21c. 1966 ADThe first Abenaki word I ever learned was Bitawbagok – the word they use for Lake Champlain. It means, literally, the waters between. Since I’ve come back from Quebec, I have thought of my address as Bitawkdakinna. I don’t know enough Abenaki to be sure it’s a real word, but translated, it is the world between. I had become a bridge between the natural world and the human one. I fit into both places and belonged to neither. Half of my heart lived with the wild wolves, the other half lived with my family.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
22c. 1966 ADLike the teens I worked with, I understood the need for miracles--they kept reality from paralyzing youJodi Picoult / quote ↗
23c. 1966 ADShe's not classically beautiful, but somehow that only makes her more interesting.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
24c. 1966 ADWhat you didn't tell someone was just as debilitating as what you did.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
