A Spark of Light

by Jodi Picoult

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? —REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

She wondered if the only way any of us can find what we stand for is by first locating what we stand against.

We are all drowning slowly in the tide of our opinions, oblivious that we are taking on water every time we open our mouths.

You don’t look at another person’s plate to see if they have more than you. You look to see if they have enough.

Truth tends to gleam, like the glint of a penny. Lies, on the other hand, are a series of loops—eventually they will trip you up.

The reason you hold on to someone too tightly isn’t always to protect them—sometimes it’s to protect yourself.

Parenthood was like awakening to find a soap bubble in the cup of your palm, and being told you had to carry it while you parachuted from a dizzying height, climbed a mountain range, battled on the front lines. All you wanted to do was tuck it away, safe from natural disasters and violence and prejudice and sarcasm, but that was not an option. You lived in daily fear of watching it burst, of breaking it yourself. Somehow you knew that if it disappeared, you would, too.

“It’s not the goodbye that hurts the most. It’s the hole you’re left with.”

Breaking someone’s heart, it seemed, caused equal damage to your own.

turned out that if you surgically removed a memory, you might stop feeling for the edges of its scar.