Leaving Time

by Jodi Picoult

The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve. The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it … some stories just don’t have a happy ending.

memory is linked to strong emotion, and that negative moments are like scribbling with permanent marker on the wall of the brain.

When someone leaves you once, you expect it to happen again. Eventually you stop getting close enough to people to let them become important to you, because then you don’t notice when they drop out of your world.

You can’t blame someone if they honestly don’t understand that their reality isn’t the same as yours.

Maybe growing up is just focusing on what you’ve got, instead of what you don’t.

Grandmothers in Botswana tell their children that if you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, you must go together.

“I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it.”

Don’t do any intentional harm to yourself or anyone else, and get happy.

And I thought—not for the first time—that forgiving and forgetting aren’t mutually exclusive.

One of the most amazing things about elephants mourning in the wild is their ability to grieve hard, but then truly, unequivocally, let go. Humans can’t seem to do that. I’ve always thought it’s because of religion. We expect to see our loved ones again in the next life, whatever that might be. Elephants don’t have that hope, only the memories of this life. Maybe that’s why it is easier for them to move on.

“Keeping a secret isn’t always lying. Sometimes it’s the only way to protect the person you love.”

What I think is that there is no perspective in grief, or in love. How can there be, when one person becomes the center of the universe—either because he has been lost or because he has been found?

Jenna lost her mother. I lost my credibility. Virgil lost his faith. We’ve all got missing pieces. But for a little while, I believed that, together, we might be whole.

Until now, I hadn’t realized that words have sharp edges; that they can cut your tongue.

Could it be as simple as that? Could love be not grand gestures or empty vows, not promises meant to be broken, but instead a paper trail of forgiveness? A line of crumbs made of memories, to lead you back to the person who was waiting?

If you think about someone you’ve loved and lost, you are already with them. The rest is just details.