Quotes from The Storyteller

Jodi Picoult ·  460 pages

Rating: (135.1K votes)


“Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“History isn't about dates and places and wars. It's about the people who fill the spaces between them.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“Inside each of us is a monster; inside each of us is a saint. The real question is which one we nurture the most, which one will smite the other.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“Power isn't about doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, Reiner. It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller



“That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“It does'nt matter who forgives you, if you're the one who can't forget.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“The person may have a scar, but it also means they have a story”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“I don't know what it is about death that makes it so hard. I suppose it's the one-sided communication; the fact that we never get to ask our loved one if she suffered, if she is happy wherever she is now...if she is somewhere. It's the question mark that comes with death that we can't face, not the period.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“It doesn't matter what it is that leaves a hole inside you. It just matters that it’s there.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller



“Sometimes, all it takes to become human again is someone who can see you that way, no matter how you present on the surface.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“If you've lived through it, you already know there are no words that will ever come close to describing it, and if you didn't - you will never understand.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“What is the point of trying to put down on paper emotions that are too complex, too huge, too overwhelming to be confined by an alphabet?

Love isn't the only word that fails.

Hate does, too.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“The weapons an author has at her disposal are flawed. There are words that feel shapeless and overused. Love, for example. I could write the word love a thousand times and it would mean a thousand different things to different readers.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller



“The only monsters I have ever known were men.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“I don't believe in God. But sitting there, in a room full of those who feel otherwise, I realize that I do believe in people. In their strength to help each other, and to thrive in spite of the odds, I believe that the extraordinary trumps the ordinary, any day. I believe that having something to hope for -- even if it's just a better tomorrow -- is the most powerful drug on this planet.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“Even the most beautiful things can be toxic.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“People have to experience things that terrify them. If they don't, how will they ever come to appreciate safety?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“Sometimes all you need to live one more day is a good reason to stick around.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller



“If history has a habit of repeating itself, doesn't someone have to stay behind to shout out a warning?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“sometimes words are not big enough to contain all the feelings you are trying to pour into them.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“I pointed to the wound. "It's missing," I said.

My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. "Yes," she said. "But see how much of me is left?”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“The only person who suffers, when you squirrel alway all that hate, is you.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“Be kind to others before you take care of yourself; make whoever you're with feel like they matter.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller



“Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets,lies,stories. We all tell them. Sometimes,because we hope to entertain. Sometimes,because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“My brother believed in all sorts of mythical creatures: pixies, dragons, werewolves, honest men.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“Loneliness is a mirror, and recognizes itself.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


“She became whoever she needed to be to survive,but she never let anyone else define her.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from The Storyteller


About the author

Jodi Picoult
Born place: in Nesconset, Long Island, New York,, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“On the first occasion Mrs Papagay had met her, there had been a discussion of the process of grief, and Mrs Jesse had nodded sagely, "I know that. I have felt that,' like a kind of tragic chorus. 'I have felt everything; I know everything. I don’t want any new emotion. I know what it is to feel like a stoan.”
― A.S. Byatt, quote from Angels and Insects


“I think you should really really be sure you love someone + that they love you back before you get into a relationship.”
― Hillary Frank, quote from I Can't Tell You


“A terminal illness doesn’t belong only to the one who is sick—it affects family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers. Not unlike a still pond disturbed by a falling stone, an impending death sends ripples through all the relationships in the life of the dying. Each person involved has his or her own set of issues, fears, and questions.”
― quote from Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying


“My earliest memories are of CP4 — that's a Kähler manifold that looks locally like a vector space with four complex directions, though the global topology's quite different. But I didn't really grow up there; I was moved around a lot when I was young, to keep my perceptions flexible. I only used to spend time in anything remotely like this" — he motioned at the surrounding more-or-less-Euclidean space — for certain special kinds of physics problems. And even most Newtonian mechanics is easier to grasp in a symplectic manifold; having a separate visible coordinate for the position and momentum of every degree of freedom makes things much clearer than when you cram everything together in a single three-dimensional space.”
― Greg Egan, quote from Schild's Ladder


“Robin: I'm sure you've learnt to bake, but you have not learned to handle Much. The phrases that you need my lady, are "No", "No you can't", and "No, get out of here before I throw something at you".”
― Robin McKinley, quote from The Outlaws of Sherwood


Interesting books

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror
(36.7K)
The Stupidest Angel:...
by Christopher Moore
Jamaica Inn
(22.7K)
Jamaica Inn
by Daphne du Maurier
The Tombs of Atuan
(71.1K)
The Tombs of Atuan
by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Coldest Winter Ever
(26.6K)
The Coldest Winter E...
by Sister Souljah
Manuscript Found in Accra
(19.8K)
Manuscript Found in...
by Paulo Coelho
A Kingdom of Dreams
(38K)
A Kingdom of Dreams
by Judith McNaught

About BookQuoters

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.