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.

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

And you know I don’t believe in God.” She moves, blocking my path. “That doesn’t mean He doesn’t believe in you,” she says.

“Every Wednesday night she would remind me to take the garbage can to the curb. In fifty years, I never once forgot, but she never gave me the benefit of the doubt. Drove me crazy. Now, I would give anything to hear her remind me again.”

“I had a conversation with someone today that really rattled me. I’m not sure what I should do about it.” “Maybe he doesn’t want you to do anything. Maybe he just needed you to listen.”

“How do you get up every morning and not remember?” “I never said I do not remember,” my grandmother corrects. “I said I prefer to forget.”

“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.”

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

‘What he did was wrong. He doesn’t deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it’s choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.’

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.”