Quotes from Nineteen Minutes

Jodi Picoult ·  440 pages

Rating: (264.3K votes)


“You don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“A mathematical formula for happiness:Reality divided by Expectations.There were two ways to be happy:improve your reality or lower your expectations.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“Something still exists as long as there's someone around to remember it.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn; color your hair; watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five.
In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world; or you can just jump off it.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes



“Can you hate someone for what they have done, but still love them for whom they had been?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was substance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“When you don't fit in, you become superhuman. You can feel everyone else's eyes on you, stuck like Velcro. You can hear a whisper about you from a mile away. You can disappear, even when it looks like you're still standing right there. You can scream, and nobody hears a sound.
You become the mutant who fell into the vat of acid, the Joker who can't remove his mask, the bionic man who's missing all his limbs and none of his heart.
You are the thing that used to be normal, but that was so long ago, you can't even remember what it was like. ”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“When you begin a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves: one for your enemy, and one for yourself.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes



“There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“But will you miss me? More importantly - will I miss you? Does either one of us really want to hear the answer to that question?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“Love [is] supposed to move mountains, to make the world go round, to be all you need, but it [falls] apart at the deatils. It [can't] save a single person.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“I know how difficult it can be when the image you've had of something doesn't match its reality; when the friend beside you turns into a monster.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“Happiness is what you choose to remember.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes



“You might have to lose control before you could find out what you'd been missing.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“Lie to yourself until it's true.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“If we don't change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“Do you know how there are moments when the world moves so slowly you can feel your bones shifting, your mind tumbling? When you think that no matter what happens to you for the rest of your life, you will remember every last detail of that one minute forever?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes



“She felt a cage coming down around her; too late she realized that he had her trapped by the heart. And like any unwilling animal that was well and truly caught, she could escape only by leaving a piece of herself behind.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“If you were drifting with a thousand other people, could you really still say you were lost?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“One person's trauma is another's loss of innocence.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“I don't know what you think of me. And you certainly would never picture us together. But probably peanut butter was just peanut butter for a long time, before someone ever thought of pairing it with jelly. And there was salt, but it started to taste better when there was pepper. And what's the point of butter without bread? (Why are all these examples of FOODS?!!?!?!?!?!?!) Anyway by myself I'm nothing special. But with you I could be.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“But then again, maybe bad things happen because it’s the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes



“What she hadn't realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you'd felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“Whether or not belive in Fate comes down to one thing: who you blame when something goes wrong. Do you think it's your fault - that if you'd tried better, worked harder, it wouldn't have happened? Or do you just chalk it up to circumstance?

I know poeple who'll hear about the people who died, and will say that it was God's will. I know people who'll say it was bad luck. And then there's my personal favorite: They were just in the wrong place at hte wrong time.

Then again, you could say the same thing about me, couldn't you?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“And that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


“To be truly popular, it has to look like something you are, when in reality, it's what you make yourself. ”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Nineteen Minutes


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About the author

Jodi Picoult
Born place: in Nesconset, Long Island, New York,, The United States
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