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If You Had Grown Up With Me, This Is One Of The Things I Would Have Tried To Teach You: Marry A Man Who Loves You More Than You Love Him. Because I Have Both Now, And When It Is The Other Way Around, There Is No Spell In The World That Can Even Out The Balance.

-Jodi Picoult

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If You Had Grown

Jodi Picoult

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If You Had Grown Up With Me, This Is One Of The Things I Would Have Tried To Teach You: Marry A Man Who Loves You More Than You Love Him. Because I Have Both Now, And When It Is The Other Way Around, There Is No Spell In The World That Can Even Out The Balance.

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No Matter Who You Are, There Is Always Some Part Of You That Wishes You Were Someone Else, And When, For A Millisecond, You Get That Wish, It's A Miracle.

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Talking Out Loud To Fictional Characters Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg.

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When Your Existence Is Hell, Death Must Be Heaven.

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

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And In General, The Residents Of The Town Wondered Why They All Felt Hollow Just Beneath The Throat, The Result Of Missing Something They Had Never Been Able To Name In The First Place.

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.

If History Has A Habit Of Repeating Itself, Doesn't Someone Have To Stay Behind To Shout Out A Warning?

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.

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Here Are The Things I Know For Sure: When You Think You're Right, You Are Most Likely Wrong. Things That Break - Be They Bones, Hearts, Or Promises - Can Be Put Back Together But Will Never Really Be Whole. And, In Spite Of What I Said, You Can Miss A Person You've Never Known. I Learn This Over And Over Again.

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I Always Wondered Why God Was Supposed To Be A Father," She Whispers. Fathers Always Want You To Measure Up To Something. Mothers Are The Ones Who Love You Unconditionally, Don't You Think?

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I Think That's Probably The Most Devastating Thing - When Someone Who Is Larger Than Life Winds Up A Shadow Of Themselves In A Hospital Bed.

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The Brain Of A Person In Love Will Show Activity In The Amygdala, Which Is Associated With Gut Feelings, And In The Nucleus Accumbens, An Area Associated With Rewarding Stimuli That Tends To Be Active In Drug Abusers. Or, To Recap: The Brain Of A Person In Love Doesn't Look Like The Brain Of Someone Overcome By Deep Emotion. It Looks Like The Brain Of A Person Who's Been Snorting Coke.

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The Ideas Choose Me, Not The Other Way Around.

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No Matter How Much You Consumed, You Would Not Have Your Fill.

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

Changing The World

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Teachers Deserve Respect," I Explain. "why Do They Get It For Free, When Everyone Else Has To Earn It?

Well I Talk A Little About That, But I Don't Admit That From The Beginning I Knew We Were Not Meant To Be Together.

Were Not Meant To Be

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People Changed. Even The People You Thought You Knew As Well As You Knew Yourself.

My Whole Life Was About Her, What If Her Whole Life Wasn’t All About Me?

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.

In The English Language There Are Orphans And Widows, But There Is No Word For The Parents Who Loses A Child.

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

Remember Something

I've Always Sort Of Wondered: If Everyone Else's Opinion Is What Matters, Then Do You Ever Really Have One Of Your Own?

The Real Power Of A Wolf Isn't In Its Fearsome Jaws, Which Can Clench With Fifteen Hundred Pounds Of Pressure Per Square Inch. The Real Power Of A Wolf Is Having That Strength, And Knowing When Not To Use It.

It Doesn't Take A Whole Long Life To Realize That What We Deserve To Have, We Rarely Get.

My Sisters Keeper

I Think You Can Love A Person Too Much. You Put Someone Up On A Pedestal, And All Of A Sudden, From That Perspective, You Notice What's Wrong - A Hair Out Of Place, A Run In A Stocking, A Broken Bone. You Spend All Your Time And Energy Making It Right, And All The While, You Are Falling Apart Yourself. You Don't Even Realize What You Look Like, How Far You've Deteriorated, Because You Only Have Eyes For Someone Else.

No Matter What Joe Hoffman And Wade Preston Say, It's Not Gender That Makes A Family; It's Love. You Don't Need A Mother And A Father; You Don't Necessarily Even Need Two Parents. You Just Need Someone Who's Got Your Back.

The English Judged A Person So That They'd Be Justified In Casting Her Out. The Amish Judged A Person So That They'd Be Justified In Welcoming Her Back. Where I'm From, If Someone Is Accused Of Sinning, It's Not So That Others Can Place Blame. It's So That The Person Can Make Amends And Move On.

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.

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

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.

There Is No Cosmic Scale On Which You Can Weigh Your Actions; You Learn Too Late What Choices Ruin The Fragile Balance.

I Only Just Found You, I Can't Lose You Now

Your Problem Is That You Have Been Too Honest For Too Long. Once You Start Doing It, Lying Is Simpler Than Breathing.

Parenting Is Really Just A Matter Of Tracking, Of Hoping Your Kids Do Not Get So Far Ahead You Can No Longer See Their Next Moves.

Honey, Kate Is Not Going To Die Sooner Because You Have One More Glass Of Mine, Or Because You Stay Overnight In A Hotel, Or Because You Let Yourself Crack Up At A Bad Joke. So Sit Your Ass Back Down And Turn Up The Volume And Act Like You're A Normal Person.

Not Everyone Understands How You Can Spin Two Lassos At The Same Time, One Of Hope And One Of Grief.

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

I Haven't Run Out Of Ideas Yet. Usually While I'm Working On A Book, I'm Doing Research For The Next One!

I Didn't Want To See Her Because It Would Make Me Feel Better. I Came Because Without Her, It's Hard To Remember Who I Am.

There Were Lies We Told To Save Ourselves, And Then There Were Lies We Told To Rescue Others. What Counted More, The Mistruth, Or The Greater Good?

...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.

I Felt A Splinter Of Guilt Wedge Into My Heart. Charlotte Had Hurt Me; In Return, I'd Hurt Rob. Maybe That's What We Do To The People We Love: Take Shots In The Dark And Realize Too Late We've Wounded The People We're Trying To Protect.

Fiction Is Like That, Once It Is Released Into The World: Contagious, Persistent. Like The Contents Of Pandora's Box, A Story That's Freely Given Can't Be Contained Anymore. It Becomes Infectious, Spreading From The Person Who Created It To The Person Who Listens, And Passes It On.

Kids Think With Their Brains Cracked Wide Open; Becoming An Adult, I've Decided, Is Only A Slow Sewing Shut.

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.

I Grew Up In A Household Where We Didn't Really Talk About Our Feelings, And Where The Only Reason You Went To A Doctor Was Because You'd Accidentally Cut Off A Limb With A Chain Saw.

I Had The Heart Of The Relationship, And No Body To Grow It In... It Broke.

How Far Can A Person Go... And Still Live With Himself.

That's The Paradox Of Loss: How Can Something That's Gone Weigh Us Down So Much?

What Was Wrong With Me? I Had A Decent Life. I Was Healthy. I Wasn't Starving Or Maimed By A Land Mine Or Orphaned. Yet Somehow, It Wasn't Enough. I Had A Hole In Me, And Everything I Took For Granted Slipped Through It Like Sand. I Felt Like I Had Swallowed Yeast, Like Whatever Evil Was Festering Inside Me Had Doubled In Size.

You Know, Sage, Jesus Didn't Tell Us To Forgive Everyone. He Said Turn The Other Cheek, But Only If You The One Who Was Hit. Even The Lord's Prayer Says It Loud And Clear: Forgive Us Our Trespasses, As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us. Not Others. What Jesus Challenges Us To Do Is To Let Go Of The Wrong Done To You Personally, Not The Wrong Done To Someone Else. But Most Christians Incorrectly Assume That This Means That Being A Good Christian Means Forgiving All Sins, And The Sinners.

The Woman Who Opens The Door Has A Blue Stain On Her Shirt And Dark Hair Wound Into A Messy Knot And The Most Beautiful Eyes I Have Ever Seen. They're Pale, Like A Lioness's, Nearly Golden, But They Also Look Like They've Done Their Fair Share Of Crying, And We All Know That A Sky With Clouds In It Is Much More Interesting Than One That Doesn't Have Any.

Iknew That All The Attributes He Was Teased For, At Age Five, Were Going To Work In His Favor By Thetime He Was Thirty-five...but I Couldn't Get Him There Overnight. You Can't Fast-forward Your Child'slife, No Matter How Much You Want To.

She's Not Classically Beautiful, But Somehow That Only Makes Her More Interesting.

What Makes A Treasure A Treasure." Marine Replied, "is How Rare A Find It Is, When You Need It The Most.

Real Mothers Don't Just Listen With Humble Embarrassment To The Elderly Lady Who Offers Unsolicited Advice In The Checkout Line When A Child Is Throwing A Tantrum. We Take The Child, Dump Him In The Lady's Cart, And Say, "great. Maybe You Can Do A Better Job." Real Mothers Know That It's Okay To Eat Cold Pizza For Breakfast. Real Mothers Admit It Is Easier To Fail At This Job Than To Succeed.

Sometimes, Mothers Say And Do Things That Seem Like They Don't Want Their Kids... But When You Look More Closely, You Realize That They're Doing Those Kids A Favor. They're Just Trying To Give Them A Better Life.

Love Meant Jumping Off A Cliff And Trusting That A Certain Person Would Be There To Catch You At The Bottom.

It Is So Strange, To Encounter An Ex. It's As If You're In A Foreign Film, And What You're Saying Face-to-face Has Nothing To Do With The Subtitles Flowing Beneath You. We Are So Careful Not To Touch, Although Once Upon A Time, I Slept Plastered To Him In Our Bed, Like Lichen On A Rock. We Are Two Strangers Who Knows Every Shameful Secret, Every Hidden Freckle, Every Fatal Flaw In Each Other.

Once Upon A Time

Where You Come From Does Matter -- But Not Nearly As Much As Where You Are Headed.

This Must Be What An Addict Feels Like, I Think, Trying To Fight The Pull Of One Last, Quick Read. My Fingers Itch Toward The Binding, And Finally, With A Sigh Of Regret, I Just Grab The Book And Open It, Hungrily Reading The Story.

This Is What It Always Comes Down To, I Realized. There Are The Ones Who Believe, And The Ones Who Don't, And Caught In The Space Between Them Are Guns.

Sometimes, All It Takes To Become Human Again Is Someone Who Can See You That Way, No Matter How You Present On The Surface.

For Me, Every Book Is A Journey - Questioning A Really Difficult Topic That Most People Don't Want To Talk About, Much Less Write About. And That's What I Need; That Works For Me As A Writer.

But As He Grew Older, He Learned That A Word Was A Powerful Thing. An Insult Didn't Have To Be Shouted To Bleed; A Vow Didn't Have To Be Whispered To Make You Believe. Hold A Thought In Your Head, And That Was Enough To Change The Actions Of Anyone And Anything That Crossed Your Path.

I Write Adult Fiction, But A Good 40 To 50 Per Cent Of My Readers Are Teenagers. I Love That If They Have To Grow Up And Move Past Jk Rowling They Can Move To Me. From Jo To Jodi!

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.

Where Did You Go?" "to The End Of The Driveway," My Mother Says. "i Was Nine Months Pregnant; That Was The Maximum Distance I Could Waddle Without Feeling As If My Uterus Was Falling Out." I Wince. "do You Have To Be Quite So Graphic?" "what Would You Like Me To Call It, Zoe? A Fetal Living Room?

Kid Says To Me, "you Play Baseball? What Position? Left Out?" And Gets A Big Laugh From The Rest Of The Class. Kid Is Only One Person Out Of 6.792 Billion Humans On This Planet. This Planet Is Only One-eighth Of The Solar System, Whose Sun Is One Of Two Billion Stars In The Milky Way Galaxy. Put It That Way, The Comment Loses It's Importance.

I Think This Is Every Mother's Worst Nightmare - Something Dreadful Happening To Her Child.

But There’s A Part Of Me That Wonders What It Would Be Like To Be The Most Important Person To Someone Else, To Always Feel Like You Were Missing A Piece Of Yourself When He Wasn’t Near You.

You Know, Michael, I Used To Sit Around Looking For A Way To Make Sense Of What Happened, Like There Was Some Kind Of Answer I Could Find If I Just Looked Hard Enough. Then One Day I Realized That If There Had Been One, Dave Would Still Be Here. And I Wondered If This...this Feeling That I Couldn't Figure It All Out...was What Dave Had Been Feeling, Too.

The Ability To Find Sparks May Be Buried So Deep In You That You Stop Believing There's A God. Until Someone Comes Along, With So Much Light In Her That You Can't Help But See Your Own, And When You're Together,that Light Grows Even Brighter.

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

You Can Tell Yourself That You Would Be Willing To Lose Everything You Have In Order To Get Something You Want. But It's A Catch-22: All Of Those Things You're Willing To Lose Are What Make You Recognizable. Lose Them, And You've Lost Yourself.

That,” She Says, “was Never Here Before.

You Know Someone's Right For You When The Things They Don't Have To Say Are Even More Important Than The Things They Do.

Identification Is Not The Same As Knowing Someone Through And Through.

Knowing Someone

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.

It's Like The Psychiatrists Themselves Are Buying Into That Stupid Belief That Therapy Is Something To Hide.

I Would Rather Be In Minority And Be Right, Than In The Majority And Wrong.

Things Break All The Time. Day Breaks, Waves Break, Voices Break. Promises Break. Hearts Break.

People Work Too Hard To Figure Out The Meaning Of Their Lives. Why Me, Why Now. The Truth Is, Sometimes Things Don't Happen To You For A Reason. Sometimes It's Just About Being In The Right Place At The Right Time For Someone Else.

The Process Of Growing Up Was Nothing More Than Figuring Out What Doors Hadn't Yet Been Slammed In Your Face.

Could You Really Love Someone Who Was Capable Of Falling In Love With Somebody Else?

Falling In Love

What If The One I Choose To Discount Is One Who Has Been Truly Hurt?

Turn Around, And The People You Thought You Knew Might Change. Your Little Boy Might Now Live Half A World Away. Your Beautiful Daughter Might Be Sneaking Out At Night. Your Ex-husband Might By Dying By Degrees. This Is The Reason That Dancers Learn, Early On, How To Spot While Doing Pirouettes: We All Want To Be Able To Find The Place Where We Started.

Researching 'lone Wolf,' I Was Amazed At How Thoughtful And Intelligent These Animals Are. There Has Never Been A Documented Attack Against A Human By A Wolf That Wasn't Provoked By The Human.

And I Remembered Something Else That Makes Us Human: Faith, The Only Weapon In Our Arsenal To Battle Doubt.

There Is No One Truth. There’s Only What Happened, Based On How You Perceive It.

There Are All Sorts Of Losses People Suffer - From The Small To The Large. You Can Lose Your Keys, Your Glasses, Your Virginity. You Can Lose Your Head, You Can Lose Your Heart, You Can Lose Your Mind. You Can Relinquish Your Home To Move Into Assisted Living, Or Have A Child Move Overseas, Or See A Spouse Vanish Into Dementia. Loss Is More Than Just Death, And Grief Is The Gray Shape-shifter Of Emotion.

I Could Think Whatever I Wanted To, But Realized That Any Promises I Made Myself Were Destined To Be Broken.

The Right Idea Is The One You Can't Stop Thinking About; The One That's In Your Head First Thing In The Morning.

Everyone Has A Book Inside Of Them - But It Doesn't Do Any Good Until You Pry It Out.

Why Is It That Only In The Very Beginnings Of A Relationship Are You Aware Of The Heat Coming From Inside A Person, Of The Number Of Inches You Would Have To Move For Your Shoulders To Brush As If It Were An Accident?

Instead Of Plotting The Demise Of The Traditional Family, As Some Politicians And Religious Leaders Would Have You Believe, Gay People Mow Their Lawns And Watch 'american Idol' And Video Their Children's Concerts And Have The Same Hopes And Dreams That Their Straight Counterparts Do.

Sometimes We Don't Know We're Dreaming; We Can't Even Fathom That We're Asleep.

Part Of Growing Up Was Learning Not To Be Quite That Honest - Learning When It Was Better To Lie, Rather Than To Hurt Someone With The Truth.

I Would Figure Out, Later, How To Explain To My Boss That, For Me, Delia Will Never Be A Story, But A Happy Ending.

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

Perfectly Normal

I Think I Have Sort Of Gravitated Toward Issues That I Don't Know The Answers To, Because That's What's More Interesting For Me To Write.

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.

You Might Not Write Well Every Day, But You Can Always Edit A Bad Page. You Can't Edit A Blank Page.

I Wonder If Other Mothers Feel A Tug At Their Insides, Watching Their Children Grow Up Into The People They Themselves Wanted So Badly To Be.

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.

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Michelle Shocked

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