Jodi Picoult quote: "I love you," he whispered, and that was the moment he knew what he was going to do. When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own. No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces."

Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting.
JODI PICOULT

Suddenly this is all too hard. I am tired of putting up walls. I want someone with the strength - an...
JODI PICOULT

It was the first time she'd discovered something she really didn't want to find, and she didn't know...
JODI PICOULT

It was possible that a miracle was not something that happened to you, but rather something that did...
JODI PICOULT

There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. ...
JODI PICOULT

If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s be...
JODI PICOULT

You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you ...
JODI PICOULT

It's disappointing to know that someone can see right through you.
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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...
JODI PICOULT

It's about a girl who is on the cusp of becoming someone.. A girl who may not know what she wants ri...
JODI PICOULT

Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.
JODI PICOULT

It is the things you cannot see coming that are strong enough to kill you.
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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...
JODI PICOULT

Doing the right thing for someone else occasionally means doing something that feels wrong to you.
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Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the...
JODI PICOULT

Fuck them all. I ought to have that tattooed on my forehead, for all the times I've thought it. Usua...
JODI PICOULT

If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice ...
JODI PICOULT

Mistakes are like the memories you hide in an attic: old love letters from relationships that tanked...
JODI PICOULT

I consider myself spiritual and I'm married to a man who is both an atheist and a humanist, and ...
JODI PICOULT

There are all sorts of experiences we can't really put a name to...The birth of a child, for one. Or...
JODI PICOULT

Edward: "Wait--you were trying to hit on me?"
Susan: "Damn straight."
Edward: "The ...
JODI PICOULT

The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first gla...
JODI PICOULT

What you didn't tell someone was just as debilitating as what you did.
JODI PICOULT

God, what had we done? It didn't really matter. Piper had been the kind of friend with whom I...
JODI PICOULT

There are just as many stories to be told in the dark spots s there are in the bright ones.
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I felt this boy whose name I couldn't be bothered to remember grunting and heaving inside me; I was ...
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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...
JODI PICOULT

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.
JODI PICOULT

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

Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once you get God on board.
JODI PICOULT

Just because a person didn't admit that something had changed didn't mean it hadn't happened.
JODI PICOULT

The process of growing up was nothing more than figuring out what doors hadn't yet been slammed in y...
JODI PICOULT

It's a fallacy that writers have to shut themselves up in their ivory towers to write. I have al...
JODI PICOULT

Gay rights is not something most of us think about - because most of us happen to have been born str...
JODI PICOULT

Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just ...
JODI PICOULT

When the elevator doors open there is only one other person inside it, a homeless man with electric ...
JODI PICOULT

When I first met Cara, she was twelve and angry at the world. Her parents had split up, her brother ...
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The corners of her mouth
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Then you're the one."
Allie blinked at him. "The one what?"
"The one who loves more." ......
JODI PICOULT

The first person you fell in love with stole your heart. The first person you made love with stole y...
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The way i see it, love is just a bigger, stickier form of trust.
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There are some weapons you can't protect yourself against.
JODI PICOULT

I grew up in a household where we didn't really talk about our feelings, and where the only reason y...
JODI PICOULT

Elise Vasquez and I stand shoulder to shoulder, watching the woman we both feel we lost, and may be ...
JODI PICOULT

I think you can love a person too much.

You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a su...
JODI PICOULT

Jacob's room is the place entropy goes to die.
JODI PICOULT

You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.
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She'd been in labor for nineteen hours; I completely understood why she wanted to pass the buck. 'Yo...
JODI PICOULT

I wanted him to feel what I felt when I was with him: that incredible combination of comfort, decade...
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People changed. Even the people you thought you knew as well as you knew yourself.
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You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get somethin...
JODI PICOULT

Things that break - be they bones, hearts, or promises - can be put back together but will never rea...
JODI PICOULT

People always want to know what it feels like, so I’ll tell you: there’s a sting when you first ...
JODI PICOULT

I do not have the money anymore. It was all yours, after all. I slipped the check into the silk lini...
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You know, he told me once, completely exasperated, you've got one glass of water inside your head, w...
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Instead of plotting the demise of the traditional family, as some politicians and religious leaders ...
JODI PICOULT

Real mothers don't just listen with humble embarrassment to the elderly lady who offers unsolicited ...
JODI PICOULT

I think the 'New York Times' reviews overall tend to overlook popular fiction, whether you&#...
JODI PICOULT

It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.
JODI PICOULT

I know better than most people that a criminal isn't always a thug in a black leather jacket with a ...
JODI PICOULT

The only way someone can leave you is if you let them.
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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...
JODI PICOULT

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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Vengeance was a funny thing: You wanted the satisfaction of knowing it had occurred, but you never w...
JODI PICOULT

They were at different places in the same relationship and like anything that's out of alighment, th...
JODI PICOULT

The truth is the truth.
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When heaven breaks, who fixes it?
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You lie to convince people you are not a monster . . . not that you are one.
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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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The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, ...
JODI PICOULT

You have to understand what you’re missing before you can really feel a loss.
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Believe me, Being gay is not a choice. Noone would choose to make life harder than it has to be.
JODI PICOULT

Ask a kid who's struggling in math if he likes being in a mixed-level class, and he'll tell you he f...
JODI PICOULT

The optimist in me wants to believe sexuality will eventually become like handwriting: there’s no ...
JODI PICOULT

The only difference between a wish and a prayer is that you're at the mercy of the universe for the ...
JODI PICOULT

But there is a different between mending someone who's broken and finding someone who makes you comp...
JODI PICOULT

Someone real," I hear myself saying. "Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pret...
JODI PICOULT

You can't hate someone until you know what it might be like to love them.
JODI PICOULT

I knew her well enough to understand that when Delia pushed you away, it was her way of making sure ...
JODI PICOULT

if i'm going to fuck up my life, does it really matter which way i do it?.
JODI PICOULT

I felt a splinter of guilt wedge into my heart. Charlotte had hurt me; in return, I'd hurt Rob. Mayb...
JODI PICOULT

Our culture promotes individuality, while the Amish are deeply entrenched in community. To us, if so...
JODI PICOULT

Having to face him at a competency hearing is like getting to hell and finding out that the only foo...
JODI PICOULT

I wasn't going to wait around for some prince, when I could very well save myself.
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You can’t create life in a place that’s dying by degrees.
JODI PICOULT

If you knew what those [pork rinds] did to your body, you wouldn't eat them.'

'If you kne...
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Everything you said, Ellie, it's true. I should be very angry. I was, for a time, but now I'm not. N...
JODI PICOULT

You get through it, you just never get over it
JODI PICOULT

We all know that a sky with clouds in it is much more interesting than one that doesn’t have any.
JODI PICOULT

I don't think we get a choice in who we fall for," Ian whispers. "I think we just do.
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To be fair, I am not the same man. The one who listened. The one who believed her.
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I can't watch someone cook without helping. It's a genetic abnormality.
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I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up- as if...
JODI PICOULT

The human capacity for burden is like bamboo—far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first ...
JODI PICOULT

I wondered what it would be like to not give a damn about what people thought of you.
JODI PICOULT

Things don't always look as they seem. Some stars, for example, look like bright pinholes, but when ...
JODI PICOULT

When you don't know where you're headed, you find places no one else would ever think to explore.
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Take it from me: love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow-beautiful while it's there, and ju...
JODI PICOULT

Although I am nine months pregnant, although I have had plenty of time to dream, I have not really c...
JODI PICOULT

Well, I had the other problem," I told him. "I had the heart of the relationship, and no body to gro...
JODI PICOULT

Only cheats go back on a promise.
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Silence has a sound
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It's the way he gets noticed, you know? I mean, imagine what it would be like if you were a squirrel...
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I used to have pink hair," I told Seven.
"I used to have a real job," he answered.
"What h...
JODI PICOULT

It feels like we are sitting on the tight bench of a bus with a stranger between us, one that neithe...
JODI PICOULT

A bus cuts the world in half...
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The really amazing thing about all this is no matter what you believe,it took some doing to get from...
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Water never stops moving. Rain falls, and runs down a mountain into a river. The river finds its way...
JODI PICOULT

Sometimes, to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least." - Julia Romano
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You can't pay a landlord in dogma.
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When I was little, the great mystery to me was not how babies were made, but why?
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I look for places like me: big, hollow, forgotten by most everyone.
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A jewel's just a rock put under enormous heat and pressure.
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A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Black and bitter and never quite right.
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When you love someone, you'll do anything you can to keep them with you.
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There is a curious thing that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character.
JODI PICOULT

[...] the quiet break of soul that comes when you realize that what looked like a rainbow was actual...
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So maybe there is a place in your life you wear out like a rut, or even better, like the soft spot o...
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Driving home, I am struck by the sudden thought that the world is inflatable, trees and grass and ho...
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I was living alone before, Campbell, if that's what you're asking." She looks at me over the edge of...
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Either you dissolve into a puddle, or you take the blow on the cheek and force yourself to lift your...
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Je suis devenu pompier parce que je voulais sauver des gens. Mais j'aurais dû être plus précis. J...
JODI PICOULT

I have only known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched th...
JODI PICOULT

What do parents look like?"
"You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to bel...
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Don't say it. Don't say nobody's going to stare at me, because they will. Don't tell me it doesn't m...
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oh shit, i think. my cheeks are on fire; my heart starts to pound.
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I sometimes wonder if it is just me, or if there are other women who figure out where they are suppo...
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Nowadays, I dont have expectations, and this way she beats them all.
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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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Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people ...
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The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark...
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The nurses, I have already learned, are the ones who give us the answers we’re desperate for. Unli...
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Here's my question: What age are you when you're in Heaven?
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But this is inaccurate. A runaway train is an accident. Me, I'll jump in front of the tracks. I'll e...
JODI PICOULT

But then again, maybe bad things happen because it’s the only way we can keep remembering what goo...
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You might have to lose control before you could find out what you'd been missing.
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But will you miss me? More importantly - will I miss you? Does either one of us really want to hear ...
JODI PICOULT

Life could take on any number of shapes while you were busy fighting your own demons. But if you wer...
JODI PICOULT

Add love, and a person might do something crazy. Add love, and all the lines between right and wrong...
JODI PICOULT

She was forced to consider the startling fact that the love of her life might not actually be someon...
JODI PICOULT

She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be som...
JODI PICOULT

Just because you didn't speak the facts out loud didn't erase their existence. Silence was just a qu...
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No matter how much you consumed, you would not have your fill.
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All teenagers knew this was true. The process of growing up was nothing more than figuring out what ...
JODI PICOULT

As it turned out, hell wasn't watching the people you love get hurt; it was coming in during the sec...
JODI PICOULT

What if love wasn't the act of finding what you were missing but the give-and-take that made you bot...
JODI PICOULT

Jacob’s concept: The concept of Asperger’s is like a flavoring added to a person and although my...
JODI PICOULT

You can't be real," Delilah murmurs.
"Says who?" I ask. "Did you really think that a story exi...
JODI PICOULT

We'd sit with a big bowl of popcorn, wrapped together in a queen-size blanket, and would escape to a...
JODI PICOULT

Just so you know, when they say "once upon a time"....they're lying. It's not once upon a time. Its ...
JODI PICOULT

Stars are fires that burn for thousands of years. Some of them burn slow and long, like red dwarfs. ...
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The thing that most people didn't understand...was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accide...
JODI PICOULT

It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there...
JODI PICOULT

Being adopted felt like reading a book that had the first chapter ripped out. You might be enjoying ...
JODI PICOULT

Even if we have grown so far apart that we don't recognize each other when we pass, we have this lif...
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Sometimes there aren't words. The silence between us is flung wide as an ocean. But I manage to reac...
JODI PICOULT

A lie took two parties - the weaver of the tale and the sucker who so badly wanted to believe it.
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I didn't think i could possibly love another baby as much as I loved the one I'd already had," I con...
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if there isn’t a them, there can’t be an us.
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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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I have a sister, so I know-that relationship, it's all about fairness: you want your sibling to have...
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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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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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I shouldn't have eavesdropped, but sometimes, that's the only way to find out the truth.
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You don't love someone because they're perfect," she says. "You love them in spite of the fact that ...
JODI PICOULT

Gay teenagers are four times as likely to attempt suicide as straight ones. I wish they knew that th...
JODI PICOULT

It's never the differences between people that surprise us. It's the things that, against all odds, ...
JODI PICOULT

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank p...
JODI PICOULT

You’ll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you’re still the one in control.
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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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Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing somethin...
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They're fake bullets, so why do I feel like Im bleeding out?
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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...
JODI PICOULT

There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition...
JODI PICOULT

Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under...
JODI PICOULT

...People do belong to each other. Once you make a sacrifice for someone, you own part of his or her...
JODI PICOULT

words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that ...
JODI PICOULT

I feel I'm able to get rid of any demons lurking in my psyche through my writing, which leaves m...
JODI PICOULT

Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can n...
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I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them....
JODI PICOULT

I became a firefighter because I wanted to save people. But I should have been more specific. I shou...
JODI PICOULT

I know what it's like to start something and have it suddenly grow out of control. And you want to g...
JODI PICOULT

But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By def...
JODI PICOULT

Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how be...
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Edward: You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal? he used to say to me. A plan.
JODI PICOULT

Life is not a plot; it's in the details.
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Annie turned away, her eyes glittering. 'Here's what no one tells you,' she said. 'When you deliver ...
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No, honestly, my mouth shouldn't be able to function unless my brain's engaged.
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The hardest part about being back in the human world was relearning emotion. Everything a wolf does ...
JODI PICOULT

You figured that the only way I'd be happy is if I did the things you thought would be best for me.
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I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure...
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A photo says, you were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, you were so important to me ...
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I always wondered why God was supposed to be a father," she whispers. Fathers always want you to mea...
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When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it's safe inside your mouth.
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When I was little I bragged about my firefighting father: my father would go to heaven, because if h...
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I ...understand how a parent might hit a child- it's because you can look into their eyes and see a ...
JODI PICOULT

Nobody wants to admit to this, but bad things will keep on happening. Maybe that's beause it's all a...
JODI PICOULT

You know how sometimes, your life is so perfect you’re afraid for the next moment, because it coul...
JODI PICOULT

I love you," he whispered, and that was the moment he knew what he was going to do. When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own. No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces.

Jodi Picoult

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