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?

It 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.

“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.

He said turn the other cheek, but only if you were the one who was hit.

‘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.”

There are so many ways to betray someone. You can whisper behind his back. You can deceive him on purpose. You can deliver him into the hands of his enemy, when he trusts you. You can break a promise. The question is, if you do any of these things, are you also betraying yourself?

It does not matter who forgives you, if you’re the one who can’t forget.