“When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“There's always going to be bad stuff out there. But here's the amazing thing -- light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into the light.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“After all, how many of us had tried to forget something traumatic...only to find it printed on the back of our eyelids, tattooed on our tongues?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“There are all sorts of experiences we can't really put a name to...The birth of a child, for one. Or the death of a parent. Falling in love. Words are like nets--we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, grief, or wonder. Finding God is like that, too. If it's happened to you, you know what it feels like. But try to describe it to someone else--and language only takes you so far.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“Did you ever wonder if the person in the picture is the same one you see when you look in the mirror?" - "That's the eternal question, isn't it? Are we born who we are, or do we make ourselves that way?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“That’s what religion does. It points a finger. It causes wars. It breaks apart countries. It’s a petri dish for stereotypes to grow in. Religion’s not about being holy...Just holier-than-thous.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“I imagine the touch of someone who loves you so much, he cannot bear to watch you sleep; and so you wake up with his hand on your heart.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“You’ll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you’re still the one in control.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“You didn't get past something like that, you go through it -- and for that reason alone, I understood more about her than she ever would have guessed.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didn't have to look for, didn't have to prove anything to, didn't have to worry about losing. Which is why, when it happened, it hurt so badly.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“I don't belong to a religion. Religion's the reason the world's falling apart..." That's what religion does. It points a finger. It causes wars. It breaks apart countries. It's a petri dish for stereotypes to grow in. Religion's not about being holy," Shay said. "Just holier-than-thou.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“Like the teens I worked with, I understood the need for miracles--they kept reality from paralyzing you”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“You know how I see it? There's always going to be bad stuff out there. But here's the amazing thing--light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into the light...I guess from my point of view, we can choose to be in the dark, or we can light a candle. And for me, Christ is that candle.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“The hardest thing in the world is believing someone can change. It's always easier to go along with the way things are than to admit that you might have been wrong in the first place.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“I want to live," he said, "So I have to die.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize she has the curves of a young woman; it's safer to say you're a good parent who has all the right conversations about drugs and sex than to acknowledge there are a thousand things she would never tell you.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“You live and let live, eventually that becomes enough.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“I know what it's like when the things you believe make you feel like you're on the outside looking in.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“Words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder. Like falling in love or finding god, if it ha...ppens to you, you know what it feels like. But try to describe it to someone else - and language only takes you so far.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“The joke's on them. One little hypodermic wont' be enough. Split a piece of wood, and they'll find me. Lift up a stone, and they'll find me. Look in the mirror, and they'll find me...If you really want to know what makes someone a killer, ask yourself what would make you do it.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“This is what it always comes down to, I realized. There are the ones who believe, and the ones who don't, and caught in the space between them are guns.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“Do you know how, when you are on the verge of a breakdown, the world pounds in your ears; a rush of blood, of consequence? Do you now how it feels when the truth cuts your tongue to ribbons, and still you have to speak it?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“A place like this wears down everything, and tolerance is no exception. In here, coexistence passes for forgiveness. You do not learn to like something you abhor; you come to live with it...You live and let live, and eventually that becomes enough.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Change of Heart
“Great poetry, whether written in Greek or in English, needs no other interpreter than a responsive heart.”
― Helen Keller, quote from The Story of My Life
“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we has a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.
And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from The Bluest Eye
“The only controls available to those on board were two push-buttons on the center post of the cabin -- one labeled on and one labeled off. The on button simply started a flight from Mars. The off button connected to nothing. It was installed at the insistence of the Martian mental-health experts, who said that human beings were always happier with machinery they thought they could turn off.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from The Sirens of Titan
“I've always liked libraries. They're quiet and full of books and full of knowledge.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
“Love has nothing to do with good reasons.”
― Henry James, quote from The Portrait of a Lady
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.