Wish You Were Here

by Jodi Picoult

Life happens when you least expect it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a blueprint in your back pocket.

“Some people burn too bright to last long.”

“How come the people who don’t even notice you exist are the ones you can’t stop thinking about?”

“The point is, if someone abandons you, it may be less about you and more about them.”

There are two ways of looking at walls. Either they are built to keep people you fear out or they are built to keep people you love in. Either way, you create a divide.

“You can’t move forward without losing something,”

I see is a person who’s been driving toward a goal for so long she can’t remember why she set it in the first place.

But instead, all that runs through my mind is that it is hard to make wishes, when in the moment, it feels like you have everything you need.

I learned the hard way that you shouldn’t stay with someone because of your past together—what matters more is if you want the same things in the future.

“I always thought it was so strange…that sailors chart where they’re going in the future by looking at a map of the past.”

Busy is just a euphemism for being so focused on what you don’t have that you never notice what you do.

It’s a defense mechanism. Because if you stop hustling—if you pause—you start wondering why you ever thought you wanted all those things.

I move closer and press my palm against hers. There’s a screen between us. Where are you? I wonder. The world that my mother inhabits, it’s not this one. But that’s not to say it isn’t real to her.

Dalí’s dripping clocks and Magritte’s The False Mirror. The whole point is for the art to make you uneasy, until you realize the world is just a construct.

Trying to figure out what happened to me isn’t important. It’s what I do with what I’ve learned that counts.

“Because art isn’t absolute. A photograph, that’s different. You’re seeing exactly what the photographer wanted you to see. A painting, though, is a partnership. The artist begins a dialogue, and you finish it.”

“You can’t plan your life, Finn,” I say quietly. “Because then you have a plan. Not a life.”

“You’re perfect, Finn,” I tell him. “You’re just not perfect for me.”

In Japan, there are monuments called tsunami stones—giant tablets on the coastline that warn descendants of earlier settlers not to build their homes past a certain point. They date back to 1896, when two tsunamis killed 22,000 people. The Japanese believe that it takes three generations to forget.

Memories are the safeguards we use to keep from making the same mistakes.