Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed--sometimes it covers you just fine, and other times it leaves you cold and shaking; and worst of all, you never know which of the two it's going to be.
Jodi PicoultRead
What is the point of trying to put down on paper emotions that are too complex, too huge, too overwhelming to be confined by an alphabet? Love isn't the only word that fails. Hate does, too.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses the inadequacy of language to fully capture complex emotions like love and hate.
Jodi Picoult highlights the limitations of language when attempting to articulate deep emotions. While words like 'love' and 'hate' are commonly used, they often fall short of encapsulating the intricacies and overwhelming nature of our feelings. The quote suggests that some emotions are too vast to be neatly summarized and that the simplest expressions may not do justice to the profound experiences they represent.
Themes
EmotionsLoveHateLanguageComplexity
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a discussion about the challenges of expressing feelings adequately.
More from Jodi Picoult
All quotes →Whether it was power they sought, or revenge, or love-well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it.
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she told me she'd be a phoenix." The image of the mythical creature rising from the ashes glitters in my mind. "They don't really exist." "She said that depends on whether or not there's someone who can see them.
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for 100,000 (dollars), you [can] flatten a house with a wrecking ball. Imagine how much less it [takes] to destroy something than it [does] to build it in the first place.
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But if you seek forgiveness, doesn't that automatically mean you cannot be a monster? By definition, doesn't that desperation make you human again?
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when you [lose someone], it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all nerves are still a little raw
Jodi PicoultRead
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