"You dont love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not"
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"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."
— Jodi Picoult (Mercy)

"If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?"
— Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)

"Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding rush of pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a heart."
— Jodi Picoult

"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?"
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"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."
— Jodi Picoult (The Pact: A Love Story)

"There's always going to be bad stuff out there. But here's the amazing thing -- light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into the light."
— Jodi Picoult (Change of Heart)

"Let me tell you this: if 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 (My Sister's Keeper)

"When you love someone you let them take care of you."
— Jodi Picoult

"A photo says, you were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, you were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch."
— Jodi Picoult

""You don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?" "
— Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)

"It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it."
— Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)

""Did you ever walk through a room that's packed with people, and feel so lonely you can hardly take the next step?" "
— Jodi Picoult (Second Glance)

"In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn; color your hair; watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five.
In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world; or you can just jump off it. "
— Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)

"I'm lonely. Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has it's own zip code. Plus, I get certifiably crazy when I've got PMS. You don't love someone because they're perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they're not."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was substance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream."
— Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)

"It's about a girl who is on the cusp of becoming someone.. A girl who may not know what she wants right now, and she may not know who she is right now, but who deserves the chance to find out."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her."
— Jodi Picoult

"Some lessons can't be taught, they simply have to be learned."
— Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)

"Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood - finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without."
— Jodi Picoult (Perfect Match)

"It's disappointing to know that someone can see right through you."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?"
— Jodi Picoult

"Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you're young. But I don't think we make any fewer when we're grown up"
— Jodi Picoult

"See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it"
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"The truth doesn't always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatley wrapped lies"
— Jodi Picoult (Keeping Faith)

"Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed--sometimes it covers you just fine, and other times it leaves you cold and shaking; and worst of all, you never know which of the two it's going to be."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under the chalk, the ground that buildings rise, and the oxygen in the air. It is the place you come back to, no matter where your headed"
— Jodi Picoult

"I learn from my own daughter that you don’t have to be awake to cry."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"Whether or not you believe in Fate comes down to one thing: who do you blame when something goes wrong. "
— Jodi Picoult

"When we're awake, we see what we need to see. When we're asleep, we see what is really there."
— Jodi Picoult (Second Glance)

"I've always sort of wondered: If everyone else's opinion is what matters, then do you ever really have one of your own?"
— Jodi Picoult

"You can't exist in this world without leaving a piece of yourself behind."
— Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)

"What if love wasn't the act of finding what you were missing but the give-and-take that made you both match?"
— Jodi Picoult (The Tenth Circle)

"Something still exists as long as there's someone around to remember it. "
— Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)

"You save yourself or you remain unsaved."
— Alice Sebold

"Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them."
— Alice Sebold