The Storyteller

by Jodi Picoult

how sometimes the most beautiful things can be poisonous.

When you are singled out for torture because of your faith, can religion still be a beacon?

the woman whose son had profound disabilities believe in the God of this stupid loaf who could help him, or the God who had let him be born that way in the first place?

The biggest mistake people make when they think about Nazi war criminals is to assume they were always monsters; before, during, and after the war. They weren’t. They were once ordinary men, with fully operational consciences, who made bad choices and had to fabricate excuses to themselves for the rest of their lives when they returned to a mundane existence.

We routinely deport hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens every year whose sole offense is that they overstayed a visa or came without the right paperwork—but people who were involved in crimes against humanity get to stay? And die peacefully here? And be buried on American soil?”

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.

Repeat the same action over and over again, and eventually it will feel right. Eventually, there isn’t even any guilt.

“So you believe people can’t change? That once you do a bad thing, you’re a bad person?” “I don’t know,” I admit. “But I do think some stains never wash out.” I

reply. “To be forgiven, the person has to be sorry. In Judaism, that’s called teshuvah. It means ‘turning away from evil.’

lunchtime literary sessions that there is good and evil in all of us. That a monster is just someone for whom the evil has tipped the balance.

And because of that, they can’t always connect with their kids or their spouses—or they make the conscious decision not to connect, so that they don’t fail the people they love.

afraid of passing on the nightmares, or of getting attached and losing someone again. But as a result of that, their kids grow up and model that behavior with their own families.”

You can blame your ugliness for keeping people at bay, when in reality you’re crippled by the thought of letting another person close enough to potentially scar you even more deeply.

You can tell yourself that it’s safer to love someone who will never really love you back, because you can’t lose someone you never had.

“who looks at a shard of flint lying beneath a rock ledge, or who finds a splintered log by the side of the road would ever find magic in their solitude. But in the right circumstances, if you bring them together, you can start a fire that consumes the world.”