Mad Honey

by Jodi Picoult

you don’t ever recover from losing someone you love—even the ones you leave behind because you’re better off without them.

I keep trying to be an atheist, but it just won’t take. In spite of how much garbage there is in the Bible—like all the instructions on how to treat your slaves, and how women should pretty much accept that we’re destined to be the property of men—there is still something about faith that I cannot let go of. I do not know what this world is, but I know that it contains miracles that I cannot explain, and the love that people have for each other is the biggest mystery of all.

“Maybe,” Elizabeth says, “you need to think about the difference between what is secret and what is private.”

How similar does someone have to be to you before you remember to see them, first, as human?

Where is the line between keeping something private, and being dishonest?

The secret weapon of mad honey, of course, is that you expect it to be sweet, not deadly. You’re deliberately attracted to it. By the time it messes with your head, with your heart, it’s too late.