Jodi Picoult

May I ask you something?" I say. "Why do you read books, when you could be outside, living a million different adventures every day?" "Because you can always count on a book to stay the same. EVerything else changes when you least expect it," she replies, bitter. "Families split apart, and nothing's forever. In books, you always know what's coming next. There are no surprises.

Teachers deserve respect," I explain. "Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?

Home is not a place, but rather, the people you love

How do you tell an adult that maybe everything wrong in the world stems from the fact that she's stopped believing the impossible can happen?

How do you know that you are not part of a book? That someone's not reading your story right now?

What could it be like to find out, in a matter of minutes, that the person you believed the sun rose and set on was not the person you'd thought?

Joseph Obomsawin, the elder I lived with there, says that those who turn to animals do so because humans have let them down.

Believe me, Being gay is not a choice. Noone would choose to make life harder than it has to be.

I believe in love. I think it just hits you and pulls the rug out from underneath you and, like a baby, demands your attention every minute of the day.

I wonder if the conversations you've never had with someone count, if you've been over them a thousand times in your mind.

Scars are just a treasure map for pain you've buried too deep to remember.

I would prove to you that being different isn't a death sentence but a call to arms.

It never failed to amaze me how the most ordinary day could be catapulted into the extraordinary in the blink of an eye.

Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

How do you tell someone that you weren't the person he thought you were? And more importantly, how did you tell him that you'd meant the things you'd said, when everything else about you turned out to be a lie.

and yet, you never knew wwhat you were capable of until you arrived at that given moment. Life was just a whole string of spots where you continued to surprise yourself.

He knew that there was a difference between something that makes you happy and something that doesn’t make you unhappy. The trick was convincing yourself these were one and the same.

Imagine a world that seemed so much bigger than you. Imagine waking up one morning and finding a piece of yourself you didn't even know existed.

You know how I get angry sometimes? That's because it's the only way I can still feel. And I need to test myself, to make sure I'm really here.

What you notice is the loneliness. Daniel started to isolate himself, because it hurt less than being pushed away.

but if I've learned anything, it's that we don't know half of what we think we do. And we know ourselves least of all.