02c. 1966 ADGrief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
04c. 1966 ADNo 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.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
05c. 1966 ADThen Henry speaks again. "Did he do it?"I turn to him slowly. "Does it matter?Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
06c. 1966 ADYou want to know what I want? I'm sick of being a guinea pig. I'm sick, but I'm never f*cking sick enough for this family.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
07c. 1966 ADTurn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
08c. 1966 ADI used to wonder about the fake pictures that came in frames you buy at the store—ladies with smooth brown hair and show-me smiles, grapefruit-headed babies on their sibling's knees—people who in real life probably were strangers brought together by a talent scout to be a phony family.Maybe it's not so different from real photos, after all.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
09c. 1966 ADBut even if every house looked identical-if all the furnishings were the same- it still wouldn't feel like yours.That's because home isn't where you are. It's who you're with.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
10c. 1966 ADEric understands that the world is rarely the way it is supposed to be. And he knows that, given the chance, we don't have to wait for someone to make messes of our lives. We do a good enough job, ourselves.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
11c. 1966 ADWhat if the puzzle of the world was a shape you didn't fit into? And the only way to survive was to mutilate yourself, carve away your corners, sand yourself down, modify yourself to fit? How come we haven't been able to change the puzzle instead?Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
12c. 1966 ADWas that all it took to be brave? Knowing that someone believed in you?Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
13c. 1966 AD...courage wasn’t something you were bequeathed at birth, and it wasn’t a lack of fright. It was overcoming your fear, because the ones you love mattered more.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
14c. 1966 ADIf 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 / quote ↗
15c. 1966 AD...in a fairy tale, the story can't be altered. The prince and princess will never have a fight. You'll never hear the queen raise her voice. No on ever gets sick; no one ever gets hurt. Maybe love is only safe in places where it can't change.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
16c. 1966 ADI wonder how much the general population of this country know that the legal system has far more to do with playing a good hand of poker than it does with justice.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
17c. 1966 ADevery now and then, i worry about people in the third world countries. and then i figure if they all started having sex, their lives would be considerably brighter.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
18c. 1966 ADwords are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
19c. 1966 ADSometimes parents don't find what they're looking for it their child, so they plant seeds for what they'd like to grow there instead. I've witnessed this with the former hockey player who takes his son out to skate before he can even walk. Or in the mother who gave up her ballet dreams when she married, but now scrapes her daughter's hair into a bun and watched from the wings of the stage. We are not, as you'd expect, orchestrating their lives; we are not even trying for a second chance. We are hoping that if this one thing takes root, it might take up enough light and space to keep something else from developing in our children: the disappointment we've already lived.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
20c. 1966 ADWas 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 / quote ↗
21c. 1966 ADSometimes, 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.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
22c. 1966 ADAnd that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
23c. 1966 ADIt was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didn't have to look for, didn't have to prove anything to, didn't have to worry about losing. Which is why, when it happened, it hurt so badly.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
24c. 1966 ADBabies don't come with instruction booklets. You'd learn the same way we all do -- you'd read up on dinosaurs, you'd Google backhoes and skidders. And you don't need a penis to go buy a baseball glove.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
