01c. 1966 ADWe pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize she has the curves of a young woman; it's safer to say you're a good parent who has all the right conversations about drugs and sex than to acknowledge there are a thousand things she would never tell you.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
02c. 1966 AD[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.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
03c. 1966 ADI wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-new house to gather dust. Maybe that was the process more commonly described as bonding: the act of learning your child as well as you know yourself.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
04c. 1966 ADI used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyway.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
05c. 1966 ADChildren are supposed to go to school, play on swing sets, skin their knees.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
06c. 1966 ADLogically, I understand that it wasn't Edward's fault my family fell apart after he left. But when you're eleven years old, you don't give a flip about logic. You just really miss holding your big brother's hand.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
07c. 1966 ADIt was easier for girls. They could say This hurts, or I don’t like how this feels, and have the complaint be socially acceptable. Boys, though, didn’t speak that language. They didn’t learn it as children and they didn’t manage to pick it up as adults, either.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
08c. 1966 ADEven if we have grown so far apart that we don't recognize each other when we pass, we have this life, this block of time, and what do you think about that?Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
09c. 1966 ADWhat is a parent, really, but somebody who picks up the things a child leaves behind - a trail made of stripped off clothing, orphaned shoes, tiny bright plastic game pieces, and nostalgia - and who hands back each of these when its needed?Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
10c. 1966 ADWhen feeling came back, in a storm of color and force and sensation, the most you could do was hold on to the person beside you and hope you could weather it. Alex closed her eyes and expected the worst-but it wasn't a bad thing; it was just a different thing. A messier one, more complicated one. She hesitated, and then she kissed Patrick back, willing to concede that you might have to lose control before you could find what you'd been missing.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
11c. 1966 ADThe English judged a person so that they'd be justified in casting her out. The Amish judged a person so that they'd be justified in welcoming her back. Where I'm from, if someone is accused of sinning, it's not so that others can place blame. It's so that the person can make amends and move on.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
12c. 1966 ADHistory tells us that six million Jews disappeared during that war. If there was no Holocaust, where did they go?' She shakes her head. 'All of that, and the world didn't learn anything. Look around. There's still ethnic cleansing. There's discrimination.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
13c. 1966 ADSuddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength - and the honesty - to break them down.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
15c. 1966 ADI 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.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
16c. 1966 ADIf I have gained anything over these months, it is the knowledge there is no starting over- only living with the mistakes you've made.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
17c. 1966 ADForgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
18c. 1966 ADA very wise man once told me that you can't look back-you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
19c. 1966 ADIn the space between yes and no, there is a lifetime. It’s the difference between the path you walk and one you leave behind; it’s the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; it’s the legroom for the lies you will tell yourself in the future.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
20c. 1966 ADYou can believe something really hard,' Faith says, 'and still be wrong.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
21c. 1966 ADThere are so many things I can't believe. That people deserve what they get, both bad and good. That one day I'll live in a world where people are judged by what they do instead of who they are. That happy endings don't have contingencies and conditions.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
22c. 1966 ADShe didn't like it when religious folks looked down on her for being an atheist; but to be honest, I didn't see how this was any different from the way she looked down on people for being Christians.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
23c. 1966 ADI sigh. “But if you’d talked to Jules—if she could hear you . . .” My voice trails off.“Then you wouldn’t feel quite so crazy?” Oliver asks gently. “Can’t you believe in me, if I believe in you?Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
24c. 1966 ADPeople believed what they wanted to believe, no matter what was right in front of their eyes.Jodi Picoult / quote ↗
