Jodi Picoult quote: "I'm telling you, if aliens landed on earth today and took a good hard look at why babies get born, they'd conclude that most people had children by accident, or because they drink too much on a certain night, or because birth control isn't one hundred percent, or for a thousand other reasons that really aren't very flattering."

There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition...
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The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first gla...
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I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has its own zip code...You do...
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What I really want to tell him is to pick up that baby of his and hold her tight, to set the moon on...
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You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank p...
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Embarrassment isn't a just cause of action.
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(24/7) once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer.
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The apple . . . came before Adam and Eve in the story of creation. It had to have been there at leas...
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Fuck them all. I ought to have that tattooed on my forehead, for all the times I've thought it. Usua...
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In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose ...
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I wondered what happened when you offered yourself to someone, and they opened you, only to discover...
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It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened whe...
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You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone f...
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If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice ...
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If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wis...
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Anxiety's like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you very far.
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Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed--sometimes it covers you just fine, and ...
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I have a sister, so I know-that relationship, it's all about fairness: you want your sibling to have...
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If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even...
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Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the...
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Doing the right thing for someone else occasionally means doing something that feels wrong to you.
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if there isn’t a them, there can’t be an us.
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It was possible that a miracle was not something that happened to you, but rather something that did...
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It was the first time she'd discovered something she really didn't want to find, and she didn't know...
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and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with...
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If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of ...
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You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not.
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Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewi...
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There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. ...
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Shooting stars are not stars at all. They re just rocks that enter the atmosphere and catch fire und...
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I didn't want to see her because it would make me feel better. I came because without her, it's hard...
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If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s be...
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There are always sides. There is always a winner and a loser. For every person who gets, there's som...
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A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you.
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Do you know how sometimes - when you are riding your bike and you start skidding across sand, or whe...
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You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you ...
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See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you ...
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Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.
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I learn from my own daughter that you don’t have to be awake to cry.
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It doesn't take a whole long life to realize that what we deserve to have, we rarely get.
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It's disappointing to know that someone can see right through you.
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Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same...
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There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up cr...
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It's about a girl who is on the cusp of becoming someone.. A girl who may not know what she wants ri...
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true love is felonious… You take someone’s breath away… You rob them of the ability to utter a...
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Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.
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It is the things you cannot see coming that are strong enough to kill you.
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The bottom line is that we never fall for the people we're supposed to.
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I'm lonely. Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I...
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Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.
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Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expe...
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Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy...
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You can't look back - you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your fu...
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I shouldn't have eavesdropped, but sometimes, that's the only way to find out the truth.
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When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you ar...
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Mistakes are like the memories you hide in an attic: old love letters from relationships that tanked...
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The best place to cry is on a mother's arms.
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If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that sh...
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Gay teenagers are four times as likely to attempt suicide as straight ones. I wish they knew that th...
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The first question she was asked was What do you do? as if that were enough to define you. Nobody ev...
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They're fake bullets, so why do I feel like Im bleeding out?
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Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing somethin...
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My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to g...
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Most people in America want an easy read. I call it McFiction - books which pass right through you w...
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But Katie knew it was a sin, had known from the moment she made the decision to lie with Adam. Howev...
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As an American I wanted to explore... why are we the only first world country that still has capital...
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When you begin a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves: one for your enemy, and one for yo...
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A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like ...
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You can argue that it's a different world now than the one when Matthew Shepard was killed, but ther...
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And that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, n...
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You’ll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you’re still the one in control.
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There are just as many stories to be told in the dark spots s there are in the bright ones.
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This was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and ange...
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God, what had we done? It didn't really matter. Piper had been the kind of friend with whom I...
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What you didn't tell someone was just as debilitating as what you did.
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I woke up one morning thinking about wolves and realized that wolf packs function as families. Every...
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Once upon a time there were two sisters. One of them was really, really strong, and one of them wasn...
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Raw love, like raw heartache, could blindside you.
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Do you know how there are moments when the world moves so slowly you can feel your bones shifting, y...
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Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength - an...
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I can see myself now, she said. And I can see what I want to be, ten years from now. But I don't und...
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It's never the differences between people that surprise us. It's the things that, against all odds, ...
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I wondered about the explorers who'd sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they ...
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The desperate usually succeed because they have nothing to lose.
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I always hated when my scars started to fade, because as long as I could still see them, I knew why ...
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The damage was permanent; there would always be scars. But even the angriest scars faded over time u...
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She sobbed the way she did everything else- with passion and excess.
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Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting.
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In the end, though, I did not kill my sister. She did it all on her own.

Or at least thi...
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You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep d...
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There are all sorts of experiences we can't really put a name to...The birth of a child, for one. Or...
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I would tell them that when you look at a person, you never know what the're hiding.
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Three months ago, if you asked me, I would have told you that if you really loved someone, you’d l...
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Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, ...
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Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late that we'v...
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When you care more if someone else lives than you do about yourself- is that what [love is]?
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He smiles at me, and I am suddenly seventeen again - the year I realize that love doesn't follow the...
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The bottom line is that we never fall for the person we're supposed to.
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Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under...
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An oncology ward is a battlefield, and there are definite hierarchies of command. The patients, they...
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...People do belong to each other. Once you make a sacrifice for someone, you own part of his or her...
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words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that ...
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Researching 'Lone Wolf,' I was amazed at how thoughtful and intelligent these animals are. T...
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Life was what happened when all the what-if’s didn’t, when what you dreamed or hoped or – in t...
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I consider myself spiritual and I'm married to a man who is both an atheist and a humanist, and ...
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Edward: "Wait--you were trying to hit on me?"
Susan: "Damn straight."
Edward: "The ...
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Scars are just a treasure map for pain you've buried too deep to remember.
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Clearly God was in some kind of mood on my birthday.
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You don't love someone because they're perfect," she says. "You love them in spite of the fact that ...
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What looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis ...
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Love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow — beautiful while it’s there, and just as likel...
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Gay rights is not something most of us think about - because most of us happen to have been born str...
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It's a fallacy that writers have to shut themselves up in their ivory towers to write. I have al...
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You saved me," I said. Nathaniel put his hands on either side of my face. "I had to," he said. "So y...
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Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once you get God on board.
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I'm the kind of person you want to kill. I had an incredibly happy childhood. I married a terrif...
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Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusi...
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See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you ...
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What if the one I choose to discount is one who has been truly hurt?
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Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just ...
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I wonder if what makes a family a family isn't doing everything right all the time but, instead, giv...
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You lie to convince people you are not a monster . . . not that you are one.
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Do you know what it's like to love someone so much, that you can't see yourself without picturing he...
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Take it from me: love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow- beautiful while it's there, and j...
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Love is the most dangerous craving of all, if you ask me. It turns us into people we aren't. It make...
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I know better than most people that a criminal isn't always a thug in a black leather jacket with a ...
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Sometimes parents don't find what they're looking for it their child, so they plant seeds for what t...
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I could tell her from personal experience that when people we love make choices we don't always unde...
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When I'm with you, bells go off in my head like a moving truck that's backing up.
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That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how muc...
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Who I am, and what I am capable of doing has always managed to surprise me.
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If you want something to be true badly enough, you can rewrite it that way, in your head. You can ev...
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Sometimes we find ourselves walking through life blindfolded, and we try to deny that we're the ones...
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We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right....
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It's choice that makes us human.
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What if it turns out that a life isn’t defined by who you belong to or where you came from, by wha...
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When you love someone more than he loves you, you'll do anything to switch the scales. You dress the...
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The only way someone can leave you is if you let them.
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Sometimes I think my whole life has been about holding on to you.
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Is Fate getting what you deserve, or deserving what you get?
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If it had been easy for Romeo to get to Juliet, nobody would have cared. Same goes for Cyrano and Do...
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Bad is not an absolute, but a relative term. Ask the robber who used the cash he stole to feed his i...
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Just because you keep something a secret doesn't mean it never happened, no matter how much you want...
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It took me a lifetime to realizethings don't get lost if they don't have value- you don't miss what ...
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You can't exist in this world without leaving a piece of yourself behind.
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Some lessons can't be taught, they simply have to be learned.
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You make yourself strong because it's expected of you. You become confident because someone beside y...
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It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.
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How could he convey to someone who'd never even met her the way she always smelled like rain, or how...
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I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as ...
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I know you love me. The question is, how much?
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What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you'd never forge...
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Nobody wants to admit to this, but bad things will keep on happening. Maybe that's beause it's all a...
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In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk a...
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Love is not a because, it's a no matter what.
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You know how sometimes, your life is so perfect you’re afraid for the next moment, because it coul...
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I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got ...
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You were in business making meth? Do you have any idea what that drug does to people?"

We...
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Campbell" Julia says "Don't do this to me"
"Do what?"
"Push me off the same cliff twice
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Most people who offer their help do it to make themselves feel better, not us. To be honest, I don't...
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People ask all the time how I'm doing, but the truth is, they don't really want to know.
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The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, ...
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Everyone thinks you make mistakes when you're young. But I don't think we make any fewer when we're ...
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Every life has a soundtrack.

There is a tune that makes me think of the summer I spent ru...
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You can fool yourself, you know. You'd think it's impossible, but it turns out it's the easiest thin...
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I feel I'm able to get rid of any demons lurking in my psyche through my writing, which leaves m...
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Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't stand the thought of them changing? Is it...
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Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots ...
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On my license, it says I'm an organ donor, but the truth is I'd consider being an organ martyr. I'm ...
JODI PICOULT

I love you," he whispered, and that was the moment he knew what he was going to do. When you loved s...
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When you showed someone how you felt, it was fresh and honest. When you told someone how you felt, t...
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Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you...
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Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved y...
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There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations
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I close my eyes, thinking that there is nothing like an embrace after an absence, nothing like fitti...
JODI PICOULT

It was possible that a miracle was not something that happened to you, but rather something that did...
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It was that she truly believed you could be fourteen when you learned how love could change the spee...
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Could you really love someone who was capable of falling in love with someone else?
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...in the blink of an eye, you might reinvent yourself...the person you were yesterday might not be ...
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I'm really proud of (
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When you read the art,
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You have to create characters who will whisk people away from their ordinary lives.
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Vengeance was a funny thing: You wanted the satisfaction of knowing it had occurred, but you never w...
JODI PICOULT

In the wake of a disaster, the last thing you needed to do was set off another bomb; instead, you wa...
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They were at different places in the same relationship and like anything that's out of alighment, th...
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She wondered how many hours it had been since she'd talked out loud. If you didn't use your voice, e...
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The truth is the truth.
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Change is a funny thing. We never are quite sure what we are becoming or even why. Then one day we l...
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High school students were cannibals; they fed off your broken heart while you watched and then shrug...
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When heaven breaks, who fixes it?
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Dante believed God punished suicides by trapping the person's spirit in a tree trunk. On Judgement D...
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newborns reminded her of tiny buddhas
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From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, c...
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His grandmother had taught him that there was no such thing as coincidence. There are millions of pe...
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Antony was also obsessive, judgmental, and paranoid.
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Just because you didn't put a name to something did not mean it wasn't there.
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Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.
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When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a p...
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I used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere alon...
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Other people look at me and think: That poor woman; she has a child with a disability. But al...
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Jodi Picoult

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