Background Image

...

I Realize Then That We Never Have Children, We Receive Them. And Sometimes It’s Not For Quite As Long As We Would Have Expected Or Hoped. But It Is Still Far Better Than Never Having Had Those Children At All.

-Jodi Picoult

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Realize Then That

Jodi Picoult

...

I Realize Then That We Never Have Children, We Receive Them. And Sometimes It’s Not For Quite As Long As We Would Have Expected Or Hoped. But It Is Still Far Better Than Never Having Had Those Children At All.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Jodi Picoult

The Joke's On Them. One Little Hypodermic Wont' Be Enough. Split A Piece Of Wood, And They'll Find Me. Lift Up A Stone, And They'll Find Me. Look In The Mirror, And They'll Find Me...if You Really Want To Know What Makes Someone A Killer, Ask Yourself What Would Make You Do It.

Do You Fix A Wheel That Isn't Broken, Or Do You Wait Until The Cart Collapses?

Words Got In The Way. The Things We Felt The Hardest--like What It Was Like To Have A Boy Touch You As If You Were Made Of Light, Or What It Meant To Be The Only Person In The Room Who Wasn't Noticed--weren't Sentences; They Were Knots In The Wood Of Our Bodies, Places Where Our Blood Flowed Backward. If You Asked Me, Not That Anyone Ever Did, The Only Words Worth Saying Were I'm Sorry.

Sometimes The Key To Happiness Is Just Expecting A Little Bit Less

Did You Ever Walk Through A Room That's Packed With People, And Feel So Lonely You Can Hardly Take The Next Step?

Superheroes Were Born In The Minds Of People Desperate To Be Rescued.

In Half Hour My Mother Has Managed To Give Me What My Father Couldn't: My Past.

From That Point Of View, I Realized That My Hole Was Not Miles Deep After All. My Father, In Fact, Could Stand On The Bottom And It Only Reached Up To His Chest. Darkness, You Know, Is Relative.

Writing Is Grunt Work - You Need To Have Self-motivation, Perseverance, And Faith... Talent Is The Smallest Part Of It.

Love Is Not An Equation, It Is Not A Contract, And It Is Not A Happy Ending. Love Is The Slate Under The Chalk, The Ground That Buildings Rise, And The Oxygen In The Air. It Is The Place You Come Back To, No Matter Where Your Headed

We Are All, I Suppose, Beholden To Our Parents - The Question Is, How Much?

Maybe You Expected Marriage To Be Perfect - I Guess That's Where You And I Are Different. See, I Thought It Would Be All About Making Mistakes, But Doing It With Someone Who's There To Remind You What You Learned Along The Way.

I Love Getting Fan Mail. Often, As A Writer, You Never Know What Your Readers Think Of A Book... You Get Critical Reviews And Sales Figures, But None Of That Is The Same As Knowing You've Made A Person Stay Up All Night Reading, Or Helped Them Have A Good Cry, Or Really Touched Their Life.

People Are Always Afraid Of The Unknown - And Banding Together Against The Thing That Is Different From Us Is A Time-honoured Tradition For Rallying The Masses.

There Are Two Reasons Not To Tell The Truth--becuase Lying Will Get You What You Want, And Because Lying Will Keep Someone From Getting Hurt.

I Was Starting To See That What Looks Like Garbage From One Angle Might Be Art From Another. Maybe It Did Take A Crisis To Get To Know Yourself; Maybe You Needed To Get Whacked Hard By Life Before You Understood What You Wanted Out Of It.

I Learned A Lot That Night. For Example, That Part Of Being The Magician's Assistant Means Coming Face-to-face With Illusion. That Invisibility Is Really Just Knotting Your Body In A Certain Way And Letting The Black Curtain Fall Over You. That People Don't Vanish Into Thin Air; That When You Can't Find Someone, It's Because You've Been Misdirected To Look Elsewhere.

For Me It's More Important That I Outline All The Facets Of A Controversial Issue And Let The Reader Make Up His Or Her Mind. I Don't Care If Readers Change Their Minds, But I Would Like Readers To Ask Themselves Why Their Opinion Is What It Is.

The Only Difference Between A Wish And A Prayer Is That You're At The Mercy Of The Universe For The First, And You've Got Some Help With The Second.

Instead Of Doing The Best Thing, We Sometimes Have To Settle For The Rightest Thing.

You Have Everything. A Family, A Great Job, A Lot Of People Who Look Up To You. You've Got A Place To Go Home To. So Go.

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.

You Can Run But You Can't Hide... But I Can Try. I Feel Air Catch In My Lungs And I Get A Cramp In My Side And This Pain, This Wonderful Physical Pain That I Can Place, Reminds Me That After All I Am Still Alive.

Maybe You Had To Leave In Order To Really Miss A Place; Maybe You Had To Travel To Figure Out How Beloved Your Starting Point Was... ...parents Aren't The People You Come From. They're The People You Want To Be, When You Grow Up. I Sat Between My Mother And My Father, Watching Strangers On Tv Carry In Shaker Rockers And Dusty Paintings And Ancient Beer Tankards And Cranberry Glass Dishes; People And Their Hidden Treasures, Who Had To Be Told By Experts That They'd Taken Something Incredibly Precious For Granted.

When A Freedom Is Taken Away From You, I Suppose, You Recognize It As A Privilege, Not A Right.

When I Think About Writers Who Use Fiction As Social Commentary And To Raise Social Awareness But Who Are Also Very Popular, I Think Of Dickens.

You Know What I Noticed When I Was With Jacob? In Your World, People Can Reach Each Other In An Instant. There's The Telephone, And The Fax - And On The Computer You Can Talk To Someone All The Way Around The World. You've Got People Telling Their Secrets On Tv Talk Shows, And Magazines That Publish Pictures Of Movie Stars Trying To Hide Their Homes. All Those Connections, But Everyone There Seems So Lonely.

Close A Door, And You'd Still Feel A Breeze Through The Window.

Can You Imagine What It Would Be Like To Know That Your Life Was Just Going To Be A Series Of Days That Were All The Same, That Were Do-overs?

Embarrassment Isn't A Just Cause Of Action.

Some Women Are Meant To Change The World While Others Are Meant To Hold It Together.

Changing The World

I Don't Know The First Thing About Holding Together A Family, Especially One That Resembles An Heirloom Vase, Shattered But Glued Back Together For Its Beauty, And No One Mentions That You Can See The Cracks As Plain As Day.

If You're Afraid Of Everyone Leaving You, What Do You Do?" Make Them Stay." And If You Can't Do That, Or Don't Know How To?" Ellie Shrugged. "i Don't Know." Yes, You Do. In Fact, You've Done It. You Leave First," Coop Said, "so You Don't Have To Watch Them Walk Away.

Anyone Can Understand Anything. You Just Have To Know How To Present Your Information.

There Was, Really, Nothing You Could Use As A Blueprint For Your Life, Except Your Past. There Was No Starting Over. There Was Only Picking Up The Pieces Someone Had Left Behind.

The Inuit Say That The Stars Are Holes In Heaven. And Every Time We See The People We Loved Shining Through, We Know They're Happy.

We All Have Things That Come Back To Haunt Us. Some Of Us Just See Them More Clearly Than Others.

If She Spoke, She Would Tell Him The Truth: She Was Not Okay At All, But Horribly Empty, Now That She Knew What It Was Like To Be Filled.

Violence Up Close Has A Smell. Like Copper Blood And Charcoal Burning.

An Item That Looks Perfectly Normal On The Surface Might Only Be Disguised.

Perfectly Normal

The World Is A Place Where The Extraordinary Can Sit Just Beside The Ordinary With The Thinnest Of Boundaries; That Even In Environments Inhospitable To Man, All Sort Of Entities Might Thrive.

The Bigger The Hole Inside You, The More Desperate You Became To Fill It.

Ross Believed In Past Lives. Moreover, He Believed That The Person You Fell In Love With In Each Life Was The Same Person You Fell In Love With In The Life Before, And The One Before That. Sometimes, You Might Miss Her - She'd Be Reborn In Post-world War I Generation, And You Wouldn't Come Back Until The Fifties. Sometimes, Your Paths Would Cross And You Wouldn't Recognize Each Other. Get It Right - That Is: Fall Madly, Truly, Deeply - And Perhaps There'd Be An Eternity Carved Out Solely For The Two Of You.

So I Do What I Do Best. I Move In The Opposite Direction.

There Is A Place In You That You Don't Even Know Exists, Where You Can Simply Stand Back And Watch Without Feeling Any Pain.

You Can Believe Something Really Hard,' Faith Says, 'and Still Be Wrong.

I Wonder If The Conversations You've Never Had With Someone Count, If You've Been Over Them A Thousand Times In Your Mind.

If It Is Possible To Die Of Grief Then Why On Earth Can't Someone Be Healed By Happiness?

There's A Cliff At The End Point Of A Person's Life; Most Us Of Peer Over The Edge Of It, Hanging On. That's Why, When Someone Chooses To Let Go, It's So Dramatically Visible. The Body Will Seem Almost Transparent. The Eys Will Be Looking At Something The Rest Of Us Can't See.

Many Of My Books Come From What If Questions That I Can't Answer, Things That I'm Worried About As Either A Woman, A Wife, A Mom, An American.

A Fire Can't Burn Forever. Eventually, It Consumes Itself.

My Sisters Keeper

You Signed No Contract To Become A Parent, But The Responsibilities Were Written In Invisible Ink. There Was A Point When You Had To Support Your Child, Even If No One Else Would. It Was Your Job To Rebuild The Bridge, Even If Your Child Was The One Who Burned It In The First Place.

Some Women Are Meant To Change The World, While Others Are Meant To Hold It Together. And Then There Are Those Of Us Who Simply Don't Want To Be In It, Because We Know No Matter How Much We Struggle, We Can't Comfortably Fit.

Words, For All They Were Flimsy And Invisible, Had Great Strength. They Could Be Fortified As A Castle Wall And Sharp As A Foil. They Could Bite, Slap, Shock, Wound. But Unlike Deeds, Words Couldn't Really Help You. No Promise Ever Rescued A Person; It Was The Carrying-through Of It That Brought About Salvation.

Religion Was Supposed To Be A Blanket Drawn Up To Your Chin To Keep You Warm, A Promise That When It Came To The End, You Wouldn't Die Alone - But It Could Just As Easily Leave You Shivering Out In The Cold, If What You Believed Became More Important Than The Fact That You Believed.

What Does It Feel Like?” He Asked. “what Does What Feel Like?” Peter Thought For A Moment. “being At The Top.” Josie Reached Across Him For Another Packet Of Material And Fed It Into The Stapler. She Did Three Of These, And Peter Was Certain That She Was Going To Ignore Him, But Then She Spoke. “like If You Take One Wrong Step,” She Said, “you’re Going To Fall.

At 17, The Smallest Crises Took On Tremendous Proportions; Someone Else's Thoughts Could Take Root In The Loam Of Your Own Mind; Having Someone Accept You Was As Vital As Oxygen. Adults, Light Years Away From This, Rolled Their Eyes And Smirked And Said, 'this Too Shall Pass' - As If Adolescence Was A Disease Like Chicken Pox, Something Everyone Recalled As A Milk Nuisance, Completely Forgetting How Painful It Had Been At The Time.

My Brother Believed In All Sorts Of Mythical Creatures: Pixies, Dragons, Werewolves, Honest Men.

I Loved Alex So Much That It Was Easier To Let Him Hurt Me Than To Watch Him Hurt Himself.

Scars Are Just A Treasure Map For Pain You've Buried Too Deep To Remember.

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.

The Reason I Am Still Sitting At Josef's Kitchen Table Is The Same Reason Traffic Slows After A Car Wreck- You Want To See The Damage; You Can't Let Yourself Pass Without That Mental Snapshot. We Are Drawn To Horror Even As We Recoil From It.

She Was Forced To Consider The Startling Fact That The Love Of Her Life Might Not Actually Be Someone With Whom She Could Spend A Lifetime.

Men Don't Traipse. We... Swagger

Just Because You Keep Something A Secret Doesn't Mean It Never Happened, No Matter How Much You Want That To Be True.

When You Finally Start To Write Something, Do Not Let Yourself Stop...even When You Are Convinced It's The Worst Garbage Ever. This Is The Biggest Caveat For Beginning Writers. Instead, Force Yourself To Finish What You Began, And Then Go Back And Edit It.

Sara: "you Are So Brave," I Tell Her, And Then I Smile. "when I Grow Up, I Want To Be Just Like You." To My Surprise, Kate Shakes Her Head Hard. Her Voice Is A Feather, A Thread. "no Mommy," She Says. "you'd Be Sick.

Memory Is Like Plaster: Peel It Back And You Just Might Find A Completely Different Picture.

Love Makes Life A Little Brighter

He Rises Over Me, A Second Sun, And Fills Me With Light And Heat.

If You Think Of A Relationship As A Living Entity, I Guess It's One Thing If The Missing Two Percent Is, Like, A Fingernail. But When It's The Heart, That's A Whole Different Ball Of Wax.

The Question I Hate The Most Is "how Did You Do It - Write Novels And Raise Your Children Simultaneously!" I Mean, Do Male Authors Get Asked That??

I Realize Then That We Never Have Children, We Receive Them. And Sometimes It’s Not For Quite As Long As We Would Have Expected Or Hoped. But It Is Still Far Better Than Never Having Had Those Children At All.

If You Read The First Page Of One Of My Novels, I Can Guarantee That You Will Read The Last One. This Isn't Just Social Commentary. This Is Also About Writing Good Page-turners. I Want People To Keep Reading.

Guarantees That

It Was So Damn Hard To Find Love In This World, To Locate Someone Who Could Make You Feel That There Was A Reason You'd Been Put On This Earth. A Child, I Imagined, Was The Purest Form Of That. A Child Was The Love You Didn't Have To Look For, Didn't Have To Prove Anything To, Didn't Have To Worry About Losing. Which Is Why, When It Happened, It Hurt So Badly.

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.

I'm Not Going To Tell A Person How To Think, Don't Believe In That. What I Want To Do, When I Write These Books, Is Just To Say Don't Be So Sure Of Yourself. Let Me Pull The Carpet Out From Underneath You, And Let's See If You Can Still Find The Footing.

You Always Knew After Shitty Things Happened, Who Your Friends Really Were.

Behind Your Back

No," He Said Calmly, Filled With Purpose. He Took Her Arms Lightly In His Hands And Shook Her. "i Am Not Giving You Up." Emily Looked At Him, And For Just A Moment He Could Read Her Thoughts. Melanie Use To Say They Were Like Twins, With Their Own Secret, Silent Language. In That Instant, Chris Felt Her Fear And Her Resignation, And The Knotty Pain Of Coming Up Against A Brick Wall Again And Again. She Glanced Away, And He Could Breathe Again. "the Thing Is, Chris" Emily Said, "it's Not Your Choice.

Do You Remember The Summer We Signed You Up For Camp? And The Night Before You Left, You Said You've Changed Your Mind And Wanted To Stay Home? I Told You To To Get A Seat On The Left Side Of The Bus, So When You Pulled Away, You'd Be Able To Look Back And See Me There Waiting For You." I Press Her Hand Against My Cheek, Hard Enough To Leave A Mark. "you Get That Same Seat In Heaven. One Where You Can Watch Me, Watching You.

What You Notice Is The Loneliness. Daniel Started To Isolate Himself, Because It Hurt Less Than Being Pushed Away.

If You Didn't Remember Something Happening, Was It Because It Never Had Happened? Or Because You Wished It Hadn't?

Remember Something

Be A Good Listener, Don't Judge And Don't Put Boundaries On Someone Else's Grief.

I Don't Write The Same Book Over And Over - I Think If I Did That, I Would Stop Writing. I Couldn't Write A Series With The Same Character, And I Couldn't Write A Romance Novel Over And Over Again That Takes Place At A Different Beach Every Year. That's Not Who I Am.

I Have Several Writer Friends, But I Don't Involve Them In My Work Process. I'm More Likely To Talk About The Business Of Publishing With Them.

Home Is Not A Place, But Rather, The People You Love

When I Was Little I Bragged About My Firefighting Father: My Father Would Go To Heaven, Because If He Went To Hell He Would Put Out All The Fires.

What If Love Wasn't The Act Of Finding What You Were Missing But The Give-and-take That Made You Both Match?

Read A Ton. Take A Workshop Course So You Learn To Give And Get Criticism.

Writing Workshop

Does Fate Ever Play By The Rules?

She Suddenly Remembered Studying The Brain In Science Class- How A Steel Rod Pierced A Man's Skull, And He Opened His Mouth To Speak Portuguese, A Language He'd Never Studied. Maybe It Would Be Like This, Now, For Josie. Maybe Her Native Tongue, From Here On In, Would Be A String Of Lies.

When Heaven Breaks, Who Fixes It?

For Someone Who Can’t Remember Very Much, There Seems To Be A Lot I Can’t Forget.

I Used To Pretend That I Was Just Passing Through This Family On My Way To My Real One.

We Dont Have To Accept Each Others Beliefs..but We Do Have To Accept Each Others Right To Believe Them.

By Now You've Already Formed Your Own Impression. You Believe That An Act Committed A Lifetime Ago Defines A Man, Or You Believe That A Person's Past Has Nothing To Do With His Future. You Think I Am Either A Hero, Or A Monster. Maybe Knowning More About Circumstances Will Make You Think Differently About Me, But It Won't Change What Happened Twenty-eight Years Ago.

I Know Better Than Most People That A Criminal Isn't Always A Thug In A Black Leather Jacket With A Big Brand On His Forehead To Warn Us Away. Criminals Sit Next To Us On The Bus. They Pack Our Groceries And Cash Our Paychecks For Us And Teach Our Children. They Look No Different From You Or Me. And That's Why They Get Away With It.

Leather Jackets

What I Really Want To Tell Him Is To Pick Up That Baby Of His And Hold Her Tight, To Set The Moon On The Edge Of Her Crib And To Hang Her Name Up In The Stars.

You Know How The Tightrope Guy At The Circus Wants Everyone To Believe His Act Is An Art, But Deep Down You Can See That He's Really Just Hoping He Makes It All The Way Across?

A Guardian Ad Litem... Gal Is Appointed By A Court To Be A Child's Advocate During Legal Proceedings That Involve A Minor. You Don't Have To Be A Lawyer To Be Trained As A Gal, But You Have To Have A Moral Compass And A Heart. Which, Actually Probably Renders Most Lawyers Unqualified For The Job.

My Dad Used To Say That Living With Regrets Was Like Driving A Car That Only Moved In Reverse.

Africa - You Can See A Sunset And Believe You Have Witnessed The Hand Of God. You Watch The Slope Lope Of A Lioness And Forget To Breathe. You Marvel At The Tripod Of A Giraffe Bent To Water. In Africa, There Are Iridescent Blues On The Wings Of Birds That You Do Not See Anywhere Else In Nature. In Africa, In The Midday Heart, You Can See Blisters In The Atmosphere. When You Are In Africa, You Feel Primordial, Rocked In The Cradle Of The World.

As Anyone Who's Ever Contracted It Knows, Lies Are An Infectious Disease. They Slip Under The Almond Slivers Of Your Fingernails And Into Your Bloodstream.

There Was Not Much Distinction Between Losing A Friend And A Lover: It Was All About Intimacy. One Moment, You Had Someone To Share Your Biggest Triumph, And Fatal Flaws With; The Next Minute, You Had To Keep Them Bottled Inside.

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.

To Be Truly Popular, It Has To Look Like Something You Are, When In Reality, It's What You Make Yourself.

But Still, It Looked Completely Natural, As If We Had Been Kissing At The Ends Of Sentences For Ages, While The Rest Of The World Was Still Hung Up On Punctuation.

When She Wanted To Escape Her Life, She Read Books

How Do You Tell An Adult That Maybe Everything Wrong In The World Stems From The Fact That She's Stopped Believing The Impossible Can Happen?

I Know What Love Is. When You Find The Person You Are Supposed To Love, Bells Ring And Fireworks Go Off In Your Head And You Can't Find The Words To Speak And You Think About Him All The Time. When You Find The Person You Are Supposed To Love, You Will Know By Staring Deeply Into Their Eyes.

Like Connor, Alex Protected Me -and He Was The Only Person I Let Close Enough To Do It. Like Connor, Alex Could Finish My Sentences Before I Did. But Unlike Connor, For Whom I Had Ultimately Come Too Late, I Was Just In Time To Take Care Of Alex.

Envy, After All, Comes From Wanting Something That Isn't Yours. But Grief Comes From Losing Something You've Already Had.

Oh,that's Right. You're A...what Did You Call It? Ah, A Ghost Hunter. You Don't Have To See Things To Believe Them." Adam's Gaze Locked Onto The Persecutor's. "maybe You've Got That Backward," He Said. "maybe It's Just That I Believe Things You Cant See.

I Believe That Having Something To Hope For - Even If It's Just A Better Tomorrow- Is The Most Powerful Drug On This Planet.

And Yet, You Never Knew Wwhat You Were Capable Of Until You Arrived At That Given Moment. Life Was Just A Whole String Of Spots Where You Continued To Surprise Yourself.

Good People Are Good People; Religion Has Nothing To Do With It.

People Ask All The Time How I'm Doing, But The Truth Is, They Don't Really Want To Know.

There Are Just As Many Stories To Be Told In The Dark Spots S There Are In The Bright Ones.

Sometimes It Made Her Want To Put Her Fist Through Glass; Other Times, It Made Her Cry A River.

Peter Curled His Hands Into Fists At His Sides. 'kiss Me,' He Said. She Leaned Towards Him Slowly, Until Her Face Was Too Close To Be In Focus. Her Hair Fell Over Peter's Shoulder Like A Curtain And Her Eyes Closed. She Smelled Like Autumn-like Apple Cider And Slanting Sun And The Snap Of The Coming Cold. He Felt His Heart Scrambling, Caught Inside The Confines Of His Own Body. Josie's Lips Landed Just On The Edge Of His, Almost His Cheek And Not Quite His Mouth. 'i'm Glad I Wasn't Stuck In Here Alone,' She Said Shyly, And He Tasted The Words, Sweet As Mint On Her Breath.

I Wonder If You've Got A Minute." I Have Many Minutes, All Of Them Used Toward A Common Purpose.

Gay Teenagers Are Four Times As Likely To Attempt Suicide As Straight Ones. I Wish They Knew That There's Nothing Wrong With Them; That They Are Just A Different Shade Of Normal.

Something Still Exists As Long As There's Someone Around To Remember It.

Clearly God Was In Some Kind Of Mood On My Birthday.

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.

There Was A Difference Between People Looking At You Because They Wanted To Be Like You, And People Looking At You Because Your Misfortune Brought Them One Rung Higher.

I Had Absolutely No Trauma In My Childhood. If Anyone Ever Assumed That My Books Were Autobiographical, They'd Be Sorely Disappointed, Because None Of These Things Happened To Me.

She Stared At Peter, And She Realized That In That One Moment, When She Hadn't Been Thinking, She Knew Exactly What He'd Felt As He Moved Through The School With His Backpack And His Guns. Every Kid In This School Played A Role: Jock, Brain, Beauty, Freak. All Peter Had Done Was What They All Secretly Dreamed Of: Be Someone, Even For Just Nineteen Minutes, Who Nobody Else Was Allowed To Judge.

I Became A Firefighter Because I Wanted To Save People. But I Should Have Been More Specific. I Should Have Named Names.

It Was Always Easier For Me To Show Love Than To Say It. The Word Reminded Me Of Pralines: Small, Precious, Almost Unbearable Sweet. I Would Light Up In His Presence; I Felt Like A Sun In The Constellation Of His Embrace. But Trying To Put What I Felt For Him Into Words Diminished It Somehow, Like Pinning A Butterfly Under Glass, Or Videotaping A Comet.

Since It Had Gotten So Quiet In The Room That You Could Hear The Sound Of Your Own Doubts.

She Told Me She'd Be A Phoenix." The Image Of The Mythical Creature Rising From The Ashes Glitters In My Mind. "they Don't Really Exist." "she Said That Depends On Whether Or Not There's Someone Who Can See Them.

It's Choice That Makes Us Human.

Shelby Believed That Love Was Like A Solar Eclipse - Breathtakingly Beautiful, Absorbing, And Capable Of Rendering You Blind. She Had Not Necessarily Gone Out Of Her Way To Avoid A Relationship, But She Hadn't Wanted On Either. It Was Called Falling In Love For A Reason - Because, Inevitably, You Crashed At The Bottom.

Falling In Love

I Learned A Long Time Ago With You That Folks Who Were Trying To Be Kind Would Rather Do It With A Macaroni-and-cheese Bake Than Any Personal Involvement. You Hand Off A Serving Dish And You've Done Your Job - No Need To Get Personally Involved, And Your Conscience Is Clean. Food Is The Currency Of Aid.

Mistakes Are Something That Happen By Accident. You Didn't Walk Out The Door One Morning And Fall Into Some Guy's Bed. You Thought About It, For A While. You Made That Choice.

Let Me Tell You What Happens When You Cook Down The Syrup Of Loss Over The Open Fire Of Sorrow: It Solidfies Into Something Wlaw. Not Grief, Like You'd Expect, Or Even Regret. No, It Gets Thick As Paste, Black As Ash; Yet It Isn't Until You Dip A Finger In And Feel That Sharp Taste Dissolving On Your Tounge That You Realize This Is Angel In Its Purest Form, Unrefined; A Substance To Be Weighed And Measyred And Spread.

The Only Monsters I Have Ever Known Were Men.

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.

I Told Myself That If I Didn't Care, This Wouldn't Have Hurt So Much - Surely That Proved I Was Alive And Human And All Those Touchy-feely Things, For Once And For All. But That Wasn't A Relief, Not When I Felt Like A Skyscraper With Dynamite On Every Floor.

There Are Some Dreams That Get Stuck Between Your Teeth When You Sleep, So That When You Open Your Mouth To Yawn Awake They Fly Right Out Of You.

This Is Love, I Think. A Place Where People Who Have Been Alone May Lock Together Like Hawks And Spin In The Air, Dizzy With Surprise At The Connection. A Place You Go Willingly, And With Wonder

I Used To Believe Everything My Brother Told Me, Because He Was Older And I Figured He Knew More About The World. But As It Turns Out, Being A Grown-up Doesn’t Mean You’re Fearless. It Just Means You Fear Different Things.

It Never Failed To Amaze Me How The Most Ordinary Day Could Be Catapulted Into The Extraordinary In The Blink Of An Eye.

It's Disappointing To Know That Someone Can See Right Through You.

Missed Opportunities Were Never Superficial Wounds; They Cut Straight To The Bone.

No One Ever Asks A Kid For Her Opinion, But It Seems To Me That Growing Up Means You Stop Hoping For The Best, And Start Expecting The Worst.

Every Year I Tell Myself That I’m Not Going To Read Any Reviews And Then I Do. We’re All Human And When I Read Something Negative It Hurts. I Think When You Write It’s Part Of The Game, You’re Going To Get Some Good Reviews And Some Bad Reviews And That’s How It Goes. I Don’t Write For The Reviews.

Me, I Was Already Jaded And Tarnished, Skeptical That A Fantasy World Could Keep Reality At Bay.

A Lot Of The Moms Of Autistic Kids I Met Are So Consumed With Being Their Child's Advocate That There's No Room For Anything Else - Least Of All Themselves. It's Why So Many Marriages End In Divorce, When A Child Is Diagnosed On The Spectrum.

Accidents Did Not Just Happen. From Time To Time They Were Carefully Plotted, Calculated, And Arranged To One’s Advantage-all, Of Course, Under The Cloak Of Happenstance.

This Was Something She Would Keep Hidden Within Herself, Maybe In Place Of The Knot Of Pain And Anger She Had Been Carrying Under Her Breastbone...a Security Blanket, An Ace Up Her Sleeve. She Might Never Use It, But She Would Always Feel Its Presence Like A Swelling Secret Stone, And That Way When She Let Go Of The Rage, She Would Not Feel Nearly As Empty.

How Do You Walk Into Someone's Life Again After Twenty-eight Years? How Do You Pick Up, When You Were Too Young To Know Where You Left Off.

People Had Figured Out All Sorts Of Ways To Make Things Seem Different Than They Truly Were.

My Mother... She Is Beautiful, Softened At The Edges And Tempered With A Spine Of Steel. I Want To Grow Old And Be Like Her.

Take It From Me: Love Has All The Lasting Permanence Of A Rainbow- Beautiful While It's There, And Just As Likely To Have Disappeared By The Time You Blink.

And I Think, Not For The First Time, That What Is Immoral Is Not Always Wrong.

The Bottom Line In Both Cases Is That People Don't Change; That No Matter How Charming You Are And How Fiercely You Love, You Cannot Turn A Person Into Something She's Not.

What I Mean Is That Those Thoughts, They're Human. And Just Because You Turn Out Differently Than Everyone's Imagined You Would Doesn't Mean That You've Failed In Some Way. A Kid Who Gets Teased In One School Might Move To A Different One, And Be The Most Popular Girl There, Just Because No One Has Any Other Expectations Of Her. Or A Person Who Goes To Med School Because His Entire Family Is Full Of Doctors Might Find Out That What He Really Wants To Be Is An Artist Instead.

Time Is An Optical Illusion- Never Quite As Soild Or Strong As We Think It Is

Optical Illusions

I Don’t Think Anyone Who Falls In Love Has A Choice. You’re Just Pulled To That Person Like True North, Whether It’s Good For You Or Bound To Break Your Heart.

Falling In Love

I Don't Know What I Was Thinking, Coming Out Here. There Are No Silver Bullets In Life, There's Just The Long, Messy Climb Out Of The Pit You've Dug Youself.

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.

Until This Moment, I Had Not Realized That Someone Could Break Your Heart Twice, Along The Very Same Fault Lines.

It Is So Easy To Presume That While Your Own World Has Ground To An Absolute Halt, So Has Everyone Else's.

I Have Never Understood Why It Is Called Losing A Child. No Parent Is That Careless. We All Know Exactly Where Our Sons And Daughters Are; We Just Don't Necessarily Want Them To Be There

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.

Suddenly, I Don't Want To Be This Person Anymore. I Don't Want To Pretend I'm Fooling The World When I'm Not. I Want Someone Else To Have A Plan For Me, Because I'm Not Doing A Very Good Job Myself.

The Act Of Reading Is A Partnership. The Author Builds A House, But The Reader Makes It A Home.

What Could You Give Me," I Ask, My Voice Shaking, "to Make Me Forget ... That You Forgot About Me?

I'm Always Writing, Even When I'm Not At My Desk. I Write On My Hands. I Used To Write On My Kids' Hands, Too, But They Don't Let Me Any More. When I'm Driving I Sometimes Write All The Way Up My Arms.

I Know That There Will Be Other Women, But They Couldn't Compare. Maybe I'll Change, Maybe Love Will Change, But I Think We Were A Once-in-a-lifetime. You Could Never Leave Me; That's Why I Am Not More Upset. You Can't Possibly Break These Feelings. They Stretch, And They Last.

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.

Saying Thank You

Gay Rights Is Not Something Most Of Us Think About - Because Most Of Us Happen To Have Been Born Straight.

There's That Unwritten Schism That Literary Writers Get All The Awards And Commericals Writers Get All The Success.

It It Strange, Suddenly Having A Memory Come Back Out Of Nowhere. You Think You're Going Crazy; You Wonder Where This Recollection Has Been Hiding All Your Life. You Try To Push It Away, Because You Think You've Hammered Out The Whole Timeline Of Your Life, But Then You See That One Extra Moment, And Suddendly You Are Breaking Apart What You Though Was A Solid Segment, And Seeing It For What It Is: Just A String Of Events, Shoulder To Shoulder, And A Gap Where There Is Room For One More.

She Had Never Been A Pretty Crier. She Sobbed The Way She Did Everything Else - With Passion And Excess.

If We Don't Change The Direction We Are Headed, We Will End Up Where We Are Going.

Things That Break - Be They Bones, Hearts, Or Promises - Can Be Put Back Together But Will Never Really Be Whole.

When Your Mother Is Made Out Of Your Dreams, Anything Real Is Bound To Disappoint You.

Families Were Never What You Wanted Them To Be. We All Wanted What We Couldn't Have: The Perfect Child, The Doting Husband, The Mother Who Wouldn't Let Go. We Live In Our Grown-up Dollhouses Completely Unaware That, At Any Moment, A Hand Might Come In And Change Around Everything We'd Become Accustomed To.

Most People Who Offer Their Help Do It To Make Themselves Feel Better, Not Us. To Be Honest, I Don't Blame Them. It's Superstition: If You Give Assistance To The Family In Need... If You Throw Salt Over Your Shoulder... If You Don't Step On The Cracks, Then Maybe You'll Be Immune. Maybe You'll Be Able To Convince Yourself That This Could Never Happen To You.

There Had Been So Many Easy Words Between Them That Daniel Was Guilty Of Nodding Every Now And Then And Tuning Out The Excess. He Hadn't Known, At The Time, That He Should Have Been Hoarding These, Like Bits Of Sea Glass Hidden In The Pocket Of A Winter Coat To Remind Him That Once It Had Been Summer.

Sometimes Knowing What's Right Isn't A Rational Decision, Or Even What Works On Paper. Sometimes Leaving Is The Best Course Of Action After All.

If He Says Jump, She Doesn't Even Ask "how High?" She Goes Out And Buys A Pogo Stick.

Even Though I Don't Write About Things That Come From My Life Because I'm Lucky, And I Live In A Great Place With Great Kids And, You Know, A Great Husband, I Think You Can Find Threads Of Me In The Characters, So That's Really What Being A Writer Is, Probably.

History Isn't About Dates And Places And Wars. It's About The People Who Fill The Spaces Between Them.

The Best Way To Prevent A Heartache Was To Cushion The Coming Blow.

I Smiled At Him As Best I Could And Pushed The Paper Across The Table Before He Could Change His Mind. Because Henry Deville Was Correct - There Was An Ingredient In My Baking More Concenctrated Than Any Extract, More Pungent Than Any Spice; An Ingredient That Everyone Would Recognize And No One Was Able To Name: It Was Regret, And It Rose When One Least Expected.

When You Want Something Bad, You'll Tell Yourself A Thousand Lies.

This Is What I Like About Photographs. They're Proof That Once, Even If Just For A Heartbeat, Everything Was Perfect.

I Wonder If What Makes A Family A Family Isn't Doing Everything Right All The Time But, Instead, Giving A Second Chance To The People You Love Who Do Things Wrong.

This Isn't A Lie, Actually. I Don't Care Why Edward Left. All I Really Want To Know Is Why I Wasn't Enough To Make Him Stay.

It Still Hurts," She Whispered. "even When You're Doing It For Someone Else, That Doesn't Stop Your Ribs From Getting Cracked, Or Your Wrist Swelling, Or Your Cuts From Bleeding.

I Know You Love Me. The Question Is, How Much?

I Know You Love Me

On My License, It Says I'm An Organ Donor, But The Truth Is I'd Consider Being An Organ Martyr. I'm Sure I'm Worth A Lot More Dead Than Alive - The Sum Of The Parts Equal More Than The Whole. I Wonder Who Might Wind Up Walking Around With My Liver, My Lungs, Even My Eyeballs. I Wonder What Poor Asshole Would Get Stuck With Whatever It Is In Me That Passes For A Heart.

Beliefs Are The Roads We Take To Our Dreams. Believe You Can Do Something-or Believe You Can't-and You'll Be Right Everytime.

The First Person You Fell In Love With Stole Your Heart. The First Person You Made Love With Stole Your Soul. And If These Were One And The Same, You Were Doomed.

I Can See Myself Now, She Said. And I Can See What I Want To Be, Ten Years From Now. But I Don't Understand How I'm Going To Get From Here To There.

Bleeding Heart, He’d Called Her. Well. He Should Know. He’d Been The First To Rip It To Pieces.

Trending Author

Category