"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)

"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

"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)

"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

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

"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

"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)

"In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future."
— Jodi Picoult (Change of Heart)

"When you don't fit in, you become superhuman. You can feel everyone else's eyes on you, stuck like Velcro. You can hear a whisper about you from a mile away. You can disappear, even when it looks like you're still standing right there. You can scream, and nobody hears a sound.
You become the mutant who fell into the vat of acid, the Joker who can't remove his mask, the bionic man who's missing all his limbs and none of his heart.
You are the thing that used to be normal, but that was so long ago, you can't even remember what it was like. "
— Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)

"Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall."
— Jodi Picoult

"As it turned out, hell wasn't watching the people you love get hurt; it was coming in during the second act, when it was already too late to stop it from happening."
— Jodi Picoult (The Tenth Circle)

"Bad is not an absolute, but a relative term. Ask the robber who used the cash he stole to feed his infant; the rapist who was sexually abused as a child; the kidnapper who truly believed he was saving a life. And just because you break the law doesn't mean you have intentionally crossed the line into evil. Sometimes the line creeps up on you, and before you know it, you're standing on the other side."
— Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)

"Do you know what it's like to love someone so much, that you can't see yourself without picturing her? Or what it's like to touch someone, and feel like you've come home? What we had wasn't about sex, or about being with someone just to show off what you've got, the way it was for other kids our age. We were, well, meant to be together. Some people spend their whole lives looking for that one person. I was lucky enough to have her all along."
— Jodi Picoult (The Pact: A Love Story)

"She was all the things I wasn't. And i was all the things she wasn't. she could paint circles around anyone; I couldn't even draw a straight line. She was never into sports; I've always been. Her hand, it fit mine."
— Jodi Picoult (The Pact: A Love Story)

"People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.

As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. I clean them, do minor repairs, keep them in good order. And everyday I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so."
— Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)

"Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. Some things are so sad that only your soul can do the crying for them."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"I don't know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.
"
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Being Scared isn't the problem, It's not running away that's the hard part"
— John Connolly

""Oh, such promises we make in the heat of our passion, when the breath catches in the throat and the belly trembles. Lured by the warmth of another- the scent of her, the strength of him- our tongues betray us and the words come tumbling from our mouths. The act becomes indistinguishable from the intent, and the truth is confused with lies, even to ourselves. Do we say these things because we truly believe them, or do we believe that, by saying them aloud, they may become true? And, when tested, how many of us can say that we fullfilled our vows, that we did not turn away, that we did not renege on the promises we made? When our partners grow old and slow, when the light in their eyes dims and our ardor cools, how many of us are not tempted to turn away and seek our pleasures elsewhere? Not I. I was faithful always. I kept my vows to her, and she her vows to me, in her way.""
— John Connolly (Nocturnes)

"Life is under no obligation to give us what we expect."
— Margaret Mitchell

"I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day."
— Margaret Mitchell (Gone With The Wind)

"I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken - and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived. "
— Margaret Mitchell

"Perhaps - I want the old days back again and they'll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears. "
— Margaret Mitchell (Gone With The Wind)

"“The land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts".....Gerald O'Hara, Gone With The Wind."
— Margaret Mitchell

"I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken -- and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived."
— Margaret Mitchell

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for. "
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three o'clock naps. And by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy...and no money to buy it with."
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship."
— Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."
— Louisa May Alcott

"My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning, and may be many; but you can overcome and outlive them all if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one. The more you love and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to Him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness, and strength. Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother."
— Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)

"I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end. (Jo March)"
— Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)

"Even more, I had never meant to love him. One thing I truly knew - knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest - was how love gave someone the power to break you.
I'd been broken beyond repair."
— Stephenie Meyer (New Moon)

"And so the lion fell in love with the lamb...," He murmured.
"What a stupid lamb, " I sighed.
"What a sick, masochistic lion."
— Stephenie Meyer

"When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, is it not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end?"
— Stephenie Meyer

"Before you Bella my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars - points of light and reason. .... And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliance, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no reason for anything."
— Stephenie Meyer

"He is like a drug to you, Bella." His voice was still gentle, not at all critical. "I see that you can't live without him now. It's too late. But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun."
The corner of my mouth turned up in a wistful half smile. "I used to think of you that way, you know. Like the sun. My personal sun. You balanced out the clouds nicely for me."
He Sighed. "The clouds I can handle. But I can't fight with an eclipse."
— Stephenie Meyer

"Twilight again, he murmured." Another ending. No matter how perfect the day is, it always has to end."
— Stephenie Meyer (Twilight)

"Stupid, shiny Volvo owner."
— Stephenie Meyer (Twilight)

"Forbidden to Remember. Terrified to Forget."
— Stephenie Meyer (New Moon)

"Edward. Edward. My life and his were twisted into a single strand. Cut one, and you cut both. If he were gone, I would not be able to live through that. If I were gone, he wouldn't live through it, either. And a world without Edward seemed completely pointless. Edward had to exist."
— Stephenie Meyer (Breaking Dawn)

"When you can live forever what do you live for?"
— Stephenie Meyer

"You are my life. You're the only thing it would hurt to lose."
— Stephenie Meyer (Twilight)

"But if you bring her back damaged again-and I don't care whose fault it is; I don't care if she merely trips, of if a meteor falls out of the sky and hits her in the head - if you return her to me in less than the perfect condition I left her in, you will be running with three legs. Do you understand now mongrel?"
— Stephenie Meyer (Eclipse)

"The bond forged between us was not one that could be broken by absence, distance or time and no matter how much more special or beautiful or perfect than he might be, he was irreversibly altered as I was. As I would always belong to him so would he always be mine."
— Stephenie Meyer (New Moon)

"I can't live in a world where you don't exist. - Bella Swan"
— Stephenie Meyer (Twilight)

"Trust me just this once - you are the opposite of ordinary.

- Edward Cullen"
— Stephenie Meyer (Twilight)