“Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood - finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“Envy, after all, comes from wanting something that isn't yours. But grief comes from losing something you've already had.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“If I have gained anything over these months, it is the knowledge there is no starting over- only living with the mistakes you've made.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“You are only as invincible as your smallest weakness, and those are tiny indeed - the length of a sleeping baby's eyelash, the span of a child's hand. Life turns on a dime, and - it turns out - so does one's conscience.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“You build a wall to keep something unwanted out … or to hold something precious in.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers, interrupt dinner.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“You saved me," I said. Nathaniel put his hands on either side of my face. "I had to," he said. "So you could save me back.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“As it turns out, you can function while your heart is being torn to shreds.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“We have been naive enough to believe that we were invincible; that we could run blind through the hairpin turns of life at treacherous speeds and never crash.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“But rules only work when everyone plays by them. What happens when someone doesn't, and the fallout bleeds right into his life? Whats stronger- the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“Envy comes from wanting something that isn't yours, but grief comes from losing something you've already had.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“But what if your obsession has nothing to do with drugs or thrills or money? What if what you want most in the world is to recapture the way life was a week, a month, a year ago-and you are willing to do whatever it takes?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“There is a gulf as wide as an ocean between should and want, and I am drowning in it.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“If I have gained anything over these months, it is the knowledge there is no starting over - only living with the mistakes you've made.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“Just when you think you've got your life by the reins, that's when it's most likely to run away with you.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“Maybe honesty is overvalued. What's truly priceless is picking out from a stream of falsehoods the ones you most need to hear.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“but if I've learned anything, it's that we don't know half of what we think we do. And we know ourselves least of all.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“Does fate ever play by the rules?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“After all, the only way to communicate is to find someone who can comprehend; the only way to be forgiven is to find someone who is willing to forgive.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“You ask your readers if they can account for every minute of their lives, every thought in their heads, and be proud of it. You ask them if they've never jaywalked.... never gone thirty-one miles per hour in a thirty-mile zone... if they've never sped up when they saw that yellow light. And when you find that single, sorry person who hasn't taken a misstep, that one person with the right to judge me, you tell him he's just as human as I am. That tomorrow, his world could turn upside down and he might find himself capable of actions he'd never believed possible... you tell him, he could have been me.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“And I think, not for the first time, that what is immoral is not always wrong.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“What's stronger-the need to uphold the law, or the motive to turn one's back on it?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“if i have gained anything over these months, it is the knowledge there is no starting over - only living with the mistakes you've made. but then, caleb taught me long ago you can't build anything without some sort of foundation. maybe we learn to live our lives by understanding, firsthand, how not to live them.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“Asking me to describe my son is like asking me to hold the ocean in a paper cup”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“I'm not saying you did the wrong thing. I'm not even saying it wasn't something I'd thought of doing, myself. But even if it was the just thing to do, or the fitting thing, it still wasn't the right thing.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“Nathaniel closes his eyes and jumps, his arms glued to his sides like that fly's. He doesn't try to break his fall, just hits hard, because it hurts less than everything else.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“...because he believed that if you wanted to get rid of a hole, you filled it. He had not realized at the time that there were all sorts of filler that took up space, but had no substance. That made you feel just as empty.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“How far can a person go... and still live with himself.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“the relationship between people knot so easily, there needs to be a person skilled at working free the threads. Sometimes, though, the only way to extricate a tangle is to cut it out and start fresh.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“When the door opens, I realize that the only thing worse than waiting is the moment you realize a decision has been made.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from Perfect Match
“He whose heart is full of tenderness, and truth; Who loves mankind more than he loves himself, And cannot find room in his heart to hate, May be another Christ. We all may be The Saviours of the world, if we believe In the Divinity which dwells in us And worship it, and nail our grosser selves, Our tempers, greeds, and our unworthy aims, Upon the cross. Who giveth love to all, Pays kindness for unkindness, smiles for frowns, Lends new courage to each fainting heart, And strengthens hope and scatters joy abroad, He, too, is a Redeemer, Son of God. Ella Wheeler Wilcox5”
― quote from Discover the Power Within You
“By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race. Before the introduction of the Arabic notation, multiplication was difficult, and the division even of integers called into play the highest mathematical faculties. Probably nothing in the modern world would have more astonished a Greek mathematician than to learn that … a huge proportion of the population of Western Europe could perform the operation of division for the largest numbers. This fact would have seemed to him a sheer impossibility…. Our modern power of easy reckoning with decimal fractions is the almost miraculous result of the gradual discovery of a perfect notation. —Alfred North Whitehead”
― quote from Code Complete
“It’s like doing one of those dumb math problems: three people are driving at 20mph in a car carrying two gallons of gas and a horse doing yoga, when a car traveling at 30mph with two clowns drinking cola collides, what time is it in Tokyo? It doesn’t make any sense and the only answer I ever come up with is who”
― Jane Harvey-Berrick, quote from Dangerous to Know & Love
“If God’s justice could be recognized as just by human comprehension, it would not be divine. MARTIN LUTHER All”
― quote from Thank You for Being Such a Pain: Spiritual Guidance for Dealing with Difficult People
“Another lightning flash, another thunder growl. Old Mr. Jay hunched his thin shoulders under his jeans coat, and allowed he'd pay for some crackers and cheese if the storekeeper'd fetch them out to us.
"I ain't even now wanting to talk against Forney Meechum," said the farmer. "But they tell he'd put his eye on Lute for himself, and he'd quarreled with his own son Derwood about who'd have her. But next court day at the county seat, was a fight betwixt Jeremiah Donovant and Derwood Meechum, and Jeremiah put a knife in Derwood and killed him dead."
Mr. Jay leaned forward. The lantern light showed the gray stubble on his gentle old face. "Who drew the first knife?" he asked.”
― Manly Wade Wellman, quote from Who Fears The Devil
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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