“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
Jodi Picoult
Born place: in Nesconset, Long Island, New York,, The United States
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“They laugh at this, the idea that one might keep herds of friendly deer or elk that walk happily to their slaughter whenever it's time for the human to eat meat. Some ask openly if there aren't consequences of a life so easy to live.”
― Joseph Boyden, quote from The Orenda
“To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from Fire and Hemlock
“innocence is ignorance; ignorance is illusion; and Commencement, while it certainly is a metaphor, is no illusion. Commencement's for the disillusioned, not for the innocent.”
― John Barth, quote from Giles Goat-Boy
“I was always fishing for something on the radio. Just like trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life. I moved the dial up and down and Roy Orbison's voice came blasting out of the small speakers. His new song, "Running Scared," exploded into the room.
Orbison, though, transcended all the genres - folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn't even been invented yet. He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, "Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him.”
― Bob Dylan, quote from Chronicles, Volume One
“Thomas More: ...And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down...d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.”
― Robert Bolt, quote from A Man for All Seasons
How Music Works
Men Explain Things t...
Boaz Brown
Three Wishes
Romance of the Three...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.
