"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)

"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)

"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)

"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)

"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)

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

"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)

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

"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)

"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

"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)

"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)

"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

"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)

"Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"Nobody wants to admit to this, but bad things will keep on happening. Maybe that's beause it's all a chain, and a long time ago someone did the first bad thing, and that led someone else to do another bad thing, and so on.

You know, like that game where you whisper a sentence into someone's ear, and that person whispers it to someone else, and it all comes out wrong in the end.

But then again, maybe bad things happen because it's the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like."
— Jodi Picoult

"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)

"It's choice that makes us human."
— Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)

"And the very act of living is a tide; at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded"
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"Lately, I have been having nightmares, where I'm cut into so many pieces that there isn't enough of me to be put back together."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"It is the things you cannot see coming that are strong enough to kill you. "
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"All teenagers knew this was true. The process of growing up was nothing more than figuring out what doors hadn't yet been slammed in your face. For years, parents tell you that you can be anything, have anything, do anything. That was why she'd been so eager to grow up-until she got to adolescence and hit a big fat wall ofreality. As it turned out, she couldn't have anything she wanted. You didn't get to be pretty or smart or popular just because you wanted it. You didn't control your own destiny, you were too busy trying to fit in."
— Jodi Picoult (The Tenth Circle)

"You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you like a forked road, and even as you choose one gritty path you've got your eyes on the other the whole time, certain that you're making a mistake."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

" Shooting stars are not stars at all. They re just rocks that enter the atmosphere and catch fire under friction. What we wish on when we see one is only a trail of debris."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"'I am Alice in Wonderland', Josie thought. 'Watch me fall.'"
— Jodi Picoult

"What if it turns out that a life isn’t defined by who you belong to or where you came from, by what you wished for or whom you’ve lost, but instead by the moments you spend getting from each of these places to the next? "
— Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)

"There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. We tell ourselves that it's the right thing to do, the altruistic thing to do. It's far easier than telling ourselves the truth."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"You are only as invincible as your smallest weakness, and those are tiny indeed - the length of a sleeping baby's eyelash, the span of a child's hand. Life turns on a dime, and - it turns out - so does one's conscience."
— Jodi Picoult (Perfect Match)

"It took me a lifetime to realizethings don't get lost if they don't have value- you don't miss what you don't care about."
— Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)

"Change is a funny thing. We never are quite sure what we are becoming or even why. Then one day we look at ourselves and wonder who we are and how we got that way. Only one thing about change remains constant...it is always painful"
— Jodi Picoult

"Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions."
— Jodi Picoult (Keeping Faith)

"There's some illogical part of me that still believes if you want Superman to show up, first there's got to be someone worth saving."
— Jodi Picoult

"Once, in second grade, Kate drew a picture of a firefighter with a halo above his helmet. She told her class that I would only be allowed to go to Heaven, because if I went to Hell, I'd put out all the fires.
~Brian Fitzgerald"
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't."
— Jodi Picoult (Change of Heart)

"... do you fix a wheel that isn't broken, or do you wait until the cart collapses?"
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"What she hadn't realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you'd felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty."
— Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)

"She felt a cage coming down around her; too late she realized that he had her trapped by the heart. And like any unwilling animal that was well and truly caught, she could escape only by leaving a piece of herself behind."
— Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)

"“You did really great up there,” I tell her, because I don’t know how to say what I really want to: that the people you love can surprise you every day. That 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)

"You can fool yourself, you know. You'd think it's impossible, but it turns out it's the easiest thing of all."
— Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)

"'The joke's on them. One little hypodermic wont' be enough. Split a piece of wood, and they'll find me. Lift up a stone, and they'll find me. Look in the mirror, and they'll find me...If you really want to know what makes someone a killer, ask yourself what would make you do it.'"
— Jodi Picoult (Change of Heart)

"Superheroes were born in the minds of people desperate to be rescued."
— Jodi Picoult (The Tenth Circle)

"You can make it dark, but I can't make it light."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

""I don't belong to a religion. Religion's the reason the world's falling apart..." That's what religion does. It points a finger. It causes wars. It breaks apart countries. It's a petri dish for stereotypes to grow in. Religion's not about being holy," Shay said. "Just holier-than-thou.""
— Jodi Picoult (Change of Heart)

"I knew her well enough to understand that when Delia pushed you away, it was her way of making sure she didn't get shoved first."
— Jodi Picoult

"You can run but you can't hide... but I can try. I feel air catch in my lungs and I get a cramp in my side and this pain, this wonderful physical pain that I can place, reminds me that after all I am still alive. "
— Jodi Picoult (Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices)

"'Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.' "
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)