“The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve. The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it … some stories just don’t have a happy ending.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“When someone leaves you once, you expect it to happen again. Eventually you stop getting close enough to people to let them become important to you, because then you don't notice when they drop out of your world.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“If you think about someone you've loved and lost, you are already with them. The rest is just details.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“Maybe growing up is just focusing on what you’ve got, instead of what you don’t.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“You can’t blame someone if they honestly don’t understand that their reality isn’t the same as yours.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“A bruise is how the body remembers it’s been wronged.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“In the wild, an elephant mother and daughter stay in close proximity their whole lives; I hope I am that lucky.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“I’m the princess in an ivory tower, except every brick is made of history, and I built this prison myself.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“Sometimes I think there’s no such thing as falling in love. It’s just the fear of losing someone.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“I wonder if, as you get older, you stop missing people so fiercely. Maybe growing up is just focusing on what you've got, instead of what you don't.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“Grandmothers in Botswana tell their children that if you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, you must go together.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“You can have the best intentions, but the moment there’s a hairline crack, it is only a matter of time before you go to pieces.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“Engaging with haters is like rearranging pictures on the Titanic. What’s the point?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“Could it be as simple as that? Could love be not grand gestures or empty vows, not promises meant to be broken, but instead a paper trail of forgiveness? A line of crumbs made of memories, to lead you back to the person who was waiting?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“memory is linked to strong emotion, and that negative moments are like scribbling with permanent marker on the wall of the brain. But there’s a fine line between a negative moment and a traumatic one. Negative moments get remembered. Traumatic ones get forgotten, or so warped that they are unrecognizable,”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“Dreaming is the closest the average human gets to the paranormal plane; it’s the time when the mind lets down its guard and the walls get thin enough for there to be glimpses to the other side. That’s why, after sleeping, so many people report a visit from someone who’s passed.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“I don't get to rewrite my story; I just have to stumble to the end of it.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it … some stories just don’t have a happy ending.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“the universe wants from us is two things: don’t do any intentional harm to yourself or anyone else, and get happy.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“Keeping a secret isn't always lying. Sometimes it's the only way to protect the person you love.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“It was almost as if there was a tear in the fabric I was made of, and he was the only color thread that would match to stitch it back up.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“It's not that he doesn't love you enough to tell you the truth," she said. "It's that he loves you too much to risk it.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“One of the most amazing things about elephants mourning in the wild is their ability to grieve hard, but then truly, unequivocally, let go. Humans can't seem to do that. I've always thought it's because of religion. We expect to see our loved ones again in the next life, whatever that might be. Elephants don't have that hope, only the memories of this life. Maybe that's why it is easier for them to move on.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“If you think about someone you’ve loved and lost, you are already with them.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“There are an endless number of people who have left a love-shaped hole in the heart of someone else. Eventually someone brave and stupid will come along and try to fill that hole. But it never works, and so instead, that selfless soul winds up with a gap in his heart, too. And so on. It's a miracle that anyone survives, when so much of us is missing.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“I had not asked to be rescued, true, but that did not mean I didn't need saving.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“My whole life, this is how I've defined the paranormal: can't understand it, can't explain it, can't deny it.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“Children are the anchors of a mother’s life. —SOPHOCLES, Phaedra, fragment 612”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
“Reality is frigid; I have to dip one toe at a time and grow accustomed to the shock before wading in further.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Leaving Time
Jodi Picoult
Born place: in Nesconset, Long Island, New York,, The United States
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“Es curioso como la posibilidad te puede levantar los ánimos. Es curioso como la realidad te puede hundir.”
― Cat Patrick, quote from Forgotten
“I tried to smile back, but no smile came, only tears.”
― Michael Morpurgo, quote from Private Peaceful
“This ain't going to be no goddamn Sunday school picnic.”
― Kent Haruf, quote from Plainsong
“It is not wise to meddle with D'Angelines in matters of love.”
― Jacqueline Carey, quote from Kushiel's Mercy
“Perched upon the stones of a bridge
The soldiers had the eyes of ravens
Their weapons hung black as talons
Their eyes gloried in the smoke of murder
To the shock of iron-heeled sticks
I drew closer in the cripple’s bitter patience
And before them I finally tottered
Grasping to capture my elusive breath
With the cockerel and swift of their knowing
They watched and waited for me
‘I have come,’ said I, ‘from this road’s birth,
I have come,’ said I, ‘seeking the best in us.’
The sergeant among them had red in his beard
Glistening wet as he showed his teeth
‘There are few roads on this earth,’ said he,
‘that will lead you to the best in us, old one.’
‘But you have seen all the tracks of men,’ said I
‘And where the mothers and children have fled
Before your advance. Is there naught among them
That you might set an old man upon?’
The surgeon among this rook had bones
Under her vellum skin like a maker of limbs
‘Old one,’ said she, ‘I have dwelt
In the heat of chests, among heart and lungs,
And slid like a serpent between muscles,
Swum the currents of slowing blood,
And all these roads lead into the darkness
Where the broken will at last rest.
‘Dare say I,’ she went on,‘there is no
Place waiting inside where you might find
In slithering exploration of mysteries
All that you so boldly call the best in us.’
And then the man with shovel and pick,
Who could raise fort and berm in a day
Timbered of thought and measured in all things
Set the gauge of his eyes upon the sun
And said, ‘Look not in temples proud,
Or in the palaces of the rich highborn,
We have razed each in turn in our time
To melt gold from icon and shrine
And of all the treasures weeping in fire
There was naught but the smile of greed
And the thick power of possession.
Know then this: all roads before you
From the beginning of the ages past
And those now upon us, yield no clue
To the secret equations you seek,
For each was built of bone and blood
And the backs of the slave did bow
To the laboured sentence of a life
In chains of dire need and little worth.
All that we build one day echoes hollow.’
‘Where then, good soldiers, will I
Ever find all that is best in us?
If not in flesh or in temple bound
Or wretched road of cobbled stone?’
‘Could we answer you,’ said the sergeant,
‘This blood would cease its fatal flow,
And my surgeon could seal wounds with a touch,
All labours will ease before temple and road,
Could we answer you,’ said the sergeant,
‘Crows might starve in our company
And our talons we would cast in bogs
For the gods to fight over as they will.
But we have not found in all our years
The best in us, until this very day.’
‘How so?’ asked I, so lost now on the road,
And said he, ‘Upon this bridge we sat
Since the dawn’s bleak arrival,
Our perch of despond so weary and worn,
And you we watched, at first a speck
Upon the strife-painted horizon
So tortured in your tread as to soak our faces
In the wonder of your will, yet on you came
Upon two sticks so bowed in weight
Seeking, say you, the best in us
And now we have seen in your gift
The best in us, and were treasures at hand
We would set them humbly before you,
A man without feet who walked a road.’
Now, soldiers with kind words are rare
Enough, and I welcomed their regard
As I moved among them, ’cross the bridge
And onward to the long road beyond
I travel seeking the best in us
And one day it shall rise before me
To bless this journey of mine, and this road
I began upon long ago shall now end
Where waits for all the best in us.
―Avas Didion Flicker
Where Ravens Perch”
― Steven Erikson, quote from The Crippled God
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