The Storyteller

by Jodi Picoult

There are all sorts of losses people suffer—from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

“It doesn’t matter what it is that leaves a hole inside you. It just matters that it’s there.”

That’s the paradox of loss: How can something that’s gone weigh us down so much?

turns out that sharing the past with someone is different from reliving it when you’re alone. It feels less like a wound, more like a poultice.

Inside each of us is a monster; inside each of us is a saint. The real question is which one we nurture the most, which one will smite the other.

“Power isn’t doing something terrible to someone who’s weaker than you, Reiner. It’s having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.”

Sometimes all it takes to become human again is someone who can see you that way, no matter how you present on the surface.

History isn’t about dates and places and wars. It’s about the people who fill the spaces between them.

“It turns out that the more you repeat the same action, no matter how reprehensible, the more you can make an excuse for it in your own mind.”

But forgiving 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.”