My Sister's Keeper

by Jodi Picoult

A photo says, You were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, You were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.

The safety of the rescuer is of a higher priority than the safety of the victim. Always.

I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.

The human capacity for burden is like bamboo—far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.

Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas—a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak.

I wonder how much the general population of this country knows that the legal system has far more to do with playing a good hand of poker than it does with justice.

We are not the first parents to lose a child. But we are the first parents to lose our child. And that makes all the difference.

When you have been with your partner for so many years, they become the glove compartment map that you’ve worn dog-eared and white-creased, the trail you recognize so well you could draw it by heart and for this very reason keep it with you on journeys at all times. And yet, when you least expect it, one day you open your eyes and there is an unfamiliar turnoff, a vantage point that wasn’t there before, and you have to stop and wonder if maybe this landmark isn’t new at all, but rather something you have missed all along.

You don’t love someone because they’re perfect,” she says. “You love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.”