Quotes from My Sister's Keeper

“You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“I wondered what happened when you offered yourself to someone, and they opened you, only to discover you were not the gift they expected and they had to smile and nod and say thank you all the same.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“I'm lonely. Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has it's own zip code. Plus, I get certifiably crazy when I've got PMS. You don't love someone because they're perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they're not.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“The bottom line is that we never fall for the people we're supposed to.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“It is the things you cannot see coming that are strong enough to kill you.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“true love is felonious… You take someone’s breath away… You rob them of the ability to utter a single word… You steal a heart.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“It's about a girl who is on the cusp of becoming someone.. A girl who may not know what she wants right now, and she may not know who she is right now, but who deserves the chance to find out.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“It's disappointing to know that someone can see right through you.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“It doesn't take a whole long life to realize that what we deserve to have, we rarely get.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“I learn from my own daughter that you don’t have to be awake to cry.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you like a forked road, and even as you choose one gritty path you've got your eyes on the other the whole time, certain that you're making a mistake.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“Do you know how sometimes - when you are riding your bike and you start skidding across sand, or when you miss a step and start tumbling down the stairs - you have those long, long seconds to know that you are going to be hurt, and badly?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“There are always sides. There is always a winner and a loser. For every person who gets, there's someone who must give. ”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“I didn't want to see her because it would make me feel better. I came because without her, it's hard to remember who I am...”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“Shooting stars are not stars at all. They re just rocks that enter the atmosphere and catch fire under friction. What we wish on when we see one is only a trail of debris.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. We tell ourselves that it's the right thing to do, the altruistic thing to do. It's far easier than telling ourselves the truth.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

“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 Picoult, quote from My Sister's Keeper

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“Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.

It? I ast.

Yeah, It. God ain't a he or a she, but a It.

But what do it look like? I ast.

Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found It.

Shug a beautiful something, let me tell you. She frown a little, look out cross the yard, lean back in her chair, look like a big rose. She say, My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate
at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can't miss it. It sort of like you know what, she say, grinning and rubbing high up on my thigh.

Shug! I say.

Oh, she say. God love all them feelings. That's some of the best stuff God did. And when you know God loves 'em you enjoys 'em a lot more. You can just relax, go with everything that's going, and praise God by liking what you like.

God don't think it dirty? I ast.

Naw, she say. God made it. Listen, God love everything you love? and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.

You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

What it do when it pissed off? I ast.

Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

Yeah? I say.

Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect.

You mean it want to be loved, just like the bible say.

Yes, Celie, she say. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?

Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I'm still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing. Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr. ____s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it is like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a'tall.

Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere.

Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind,water, a big rock.

But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don't want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.

Amen”
― Alice Walker, quote from The Color Purple

“From then on, Matilda would visit the library only once a week in order to take out new books and return the old ones. Her own small bedroom now became her reading-room and there she would sit and read most afternoons, often with a mug of hot chocolate beside her. She was not quite tall enough to reach things around in the kitchen, but she kept a small box in the outhouse which she brought in and stood on in order to get whatever she wanted. Mostly it was hot chocolate she made, warming the milk in a saucepan on the stove before mixing it. Occasionally she made Bovril or Ovaltine. It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons. The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Matilda

“I'd rather take coffee than compliments just now.”
― Louisa May Alcott, quote from Little Women

“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from The Fellowship of the Ring

“Clarke, define resplendent. I think it’s shining, sir. Pithy, Clarke, but adequate. McCourt, give us a sentence with pithy. Clarke is pithy but adequate, sir. Adroit, McCourt. You have a mind for the priesthood, my boy, or politics. Think of that.”
― Frank McCourt, quote from Angela's Ashes

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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.

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