Nineteen Minutes

by Jodi Picoult

There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.

But then again, maybe bad things happen because it’s the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like.

If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn’t be filled?

When you don’t fit in, you become superhuman. You can feel everyone else’s eyes on you, stuck like Velcro. You can hear a whisper about you from a mile away. You can disappear, even when it looks like you’re still standing right there. You can scream, and nobody hears a sound.

You weren’t invincible when you were a teenager. You were just stupid.

Maybe empathy, like any unused muscle, simply atrophied.

Something still exists as long as there’s someone around to remember it.