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Ross Was A Firm Believer That You Could Not Force Circumstance. You Could Buckle Your Seat Belt, But Still Crash The Car. You Could Throw Yourself In Front Of An Oncoming Train, But Somehow Survive. You Could Wait For Years To Find A Ghost, And Then Have One Sneak Up On You When You Were Too Busy Falling In Love With A Woman To Pay Attention. To That End, He Made The Conscious Decision To Stop Waiting For Lia. When He Least Expected Her, That Was When She Would Show Up.

-Jodi Picoult

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Ross Was A Firm

Jodi Picoult

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Ross Was A Firm Believer That You Could Not Force Circumstance. You Could Buckle Your Seat Belt, But Still Crash The Car. You Could Throw Yourself In Front Of An Oncoming Train, But Somehow Survive. You Could Wait For Years To Find A Ghost, And Then Have One Sneak Up On You When You Were Too Busy Falling In Love With A Woman To Pay Attention. To That End, He Made The Conscious Decision To Stop Waiting For Lia. When He Least Expected Her, That Was When She Would Show Up.

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Falling In Love

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In Fairytales, When The Mask Came Off, The Handsome Prince Still Loved The Girl, No Matter What -and That Alone Would Turn Her Into A Princess.

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I Believe In Love. I Think It Just Hits You And Pulls The Rug Out From Underneath You And, Like A Baby, Demands Your Attention Every Minute Of The Day.

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What You Had Could Never Make Up For What You'd Lost.

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I May Not Have A Degree, But I Certainly Got An Education.

What She Hadn't Realized Was That Sometimes When Your Vision Was That Sharp And True, It Could Cut You. That Only If You'd Felt Such Fullness Could You Really Understand The Ache Of Being Empty.

Is Fate Getting What You Deserve, Or Deserving What You Get?

What You Deserve

And, After All, What Is A Lie? 'tis But The Truth In Masquerade.

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

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

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When You Begin A Journey Of Revenge, Start By Digging Two Graves: One For Your Enemy, And One For Yourself.

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I Realized It Was Like Looking Into The Sun—you Shouldn't Do It, Because You'd Turn Your Face Away And Be Blind To Everything Else.

It Does'nt Matter Who Forgives You, If You're The One Who Can't Forget.

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Think About It: Romeo And Juliet Bucked The System, And Look Where It Got Them. Superman Has The Hots For Lois Lane, When The Better Match, Of Course, Would Be With Wonder Woman.

Since I Was Five, I've Known That I Was Adopted, Which Is A Politically Correct Term For Being Clueless About One's Own Origins.

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Falling In Love

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Knowing Who You Are

Where You Belong

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How Many Times Would I Throw This Away Before I Realized It Was What I Had Been Looking For All Along?

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

Knowing Someone

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.

My Teacher In First Grade Said That Long Ago People Used To Believe All Kinds Of Things, Because They Didn't Know Any Better. Like You Shouldn't Take A Bath, Because It Could Make You Sick. And Then Someone Saw Germs Under A Microscope And Started To Think Differently. You Can Believe Something Really Hard, And Still Be Wrong. (faith White)

Or. I Hate That Word. It’s Two Letters Long And Stuffed To The Gills With Reasonable Doubt.

Sometimes I Think My Whole Life Has Been About Holding On To You.

Bad Is Not An Absolute, But A Relative Term. Ask The Robber Who Used The Cash He Stole To Feed His Infant; The Rapist Who Was Sexually Abused As A Child; The Kidnapper Who Truly Believed He Was Saving A Life. And Just Because You Break The Law Doesn't Mean You Have Intentionally Crossed The Line Into Evil. Sometimes The Line Creeps Up On You, And Before You Know It, You're Standing On The Other Side.

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

My Sisters Keeper

If It Had Been Easy For Romeo To Get To Juliet, Nobody Would Have Cared. Same Goes For Cyrano And Don Quixote And Gatsby And Their Respective Paramours. What Captures The Imagination Is Watching Men Throw Themselves At A Brick Wall Over And Over Again, And Wondering If This Is The Time That They Won't Be Able To Get Back Up.

People Don’t Just Disappear. There’s Always A Reason, Or An Enemy With A Grudge. There’s Always A Loose Thread That Starts To Unravel.

Objection!" Metz Shouts. Grounds?" The Judge Asks. Well...he's My Witness!

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'm Telling You, If Aliens Landed On Earth Today And Took A Good Hard Look At Why Babies Get Born, They'd Conclude That Most People Had Children By Accident, Or Because They Drink Too Much On A Certain Night, Or Because Birth Control Isn't One Hundred Percent, Or For A Thousand Other Reasons That Really Aren't Very Flattering.

There Are Some Weapons You Can't Protect Yourself Against.

Protect Yourself

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

Maybe The Reason I've Never Died In This Story Is That I've Never Had Something Worth Dying For Before.

You Know How Hind-sight Is 20/20? Love Is When You Look Back And Wouldn't Change Anything.

You Make Yourself Strong Because It's Expected Of You. You Become Confident Because Someone Beside You Is Unsure. You Turn Into The Person Others Need You To Be.

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.

The Problem Was, You Couldn't Have One Without The Other. There Couldn't Be A Bad Guy Unless There Was A Good Guy To Create The Standard. And There Couldn't Be A Good Guy Until A Bad Guy Showed Just How Far Off The Path He Might Stray.

Every Life Has A Soundtrack.

Who Spit In Your Porridge?

Or In Other Words, It's The Substance You've Got When You Start That Determines The Outcome.

My First Job Was As An Assistant In The Local Library. Self Fulfilling Prophecy?

There Are All Sorts Of Experiences We Can't Really Put A Name To...the Birth Of A Child, For One. Or The Death Of A Parent. Falling In Love. Words Are Like Nets--we Hope They'll Cover What We Mean, But We Know They Can't Possibly Hold That Much Joy, Grief, Or Wonder. Finding God Is Like That, Too. If It's Happened To You, You Know What It Feels Like. But Try To Describe It To Someone Else--and Language Only Takes You So Far.

Falling In Love

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

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

Then They Scrambled Through The Window And Into The Darkness, Determined To Turn Themselves Into What They Were Not.

You Have To Understand What You’re Missing Before You Can Really Feel A Loss.

In Books, You Always Know What's Coming Next. There Are No Surprises.

Everyone Still Deserves To Have Their Say.

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?

I Consider Myself Spiritual And I'm Married To A Man Who Is Both An Atheist And A Humanist, And My Kids Have Been Raised With The Traditions Of Different Religions, But They Do Not Go To Church Or Temple. My Feeling Is That Everyone Should Be Able To Believe What They Want Or Need To Believe.

At Home I Was Raped By A Guy I Thought I Loved' Trixie Said, Because Thats What It Was To Her And Always Would Be.

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 Grief Is Like A Really Ugly Couch. It Never Goes Away. You Can Decorate Around It; You Can Slap A Doily On Top Of It; You Can Push It To The Corner Of The Room-but Eventually, You Learn To Live With It.

If You Don't Believe In Yourself, And You Don't Have The Fortitude To Make That Dream Happen, Why Should The Hotshots In The Publishing World Take A Chance On You? I Don't Believe That You Need An Mfa To Be A Writer, But I Do Think You Need To Take Some Good Workshops.

Anna Is The Only Proof I Have That I Was Born Into This Family. Instead Of Dropped Off On The Doorstep By Some Bonnie And Clyde Couple That Ran Off Into The Night. On The Surface, We’re Polar Opposites. Under The Skin, Though, We’re The Same: People Think They Know What They’re Getting, And They’re Always Wrong. (jesse)

It Felt Like I'd Been Living Underground, And For A Moment, I'd Been Given This Glimpse Of The Sky. Once You've Seen That, How Can You Go Back Where You Came From?

That The Sum Of A Man's Life Was Not Where He Wound Up But In The Details That Brought Him There. That We Made Mistakes. I Closed My Eyes, Sick Of The Riddles, And To My Surprise All I Could See Were Dandelions-as If They Had Been Painted On The Fields Of My Imagination, A Hundred Thousand Suns. And I Remembered Something Else That Makes Us Human: Faith, The Only Weapon In Our Arsenal To Battle Doubt.

Grief Is A Curious Thing, When It Happens Unexpectedly. It Is A Band-aid Being Ripped Away, Taking The Top Layer Off A Family. And The Underbelly Of A Household Is Never Pretty, Ours No Exception. There Were Times I Stayed In My Room For Days On End With Headphones On, If Only So That I Would Not Have To Listen To My Mother Cry. There Were The Weeks That My Father Worked Round-the-clock Shifts, So That He Wouldn't Have To Come Home To A House That Felt Too Big For Us.

Annie Turned Away, Her Eyes Glittering. 'here's What No One Tells You,' She Said. 'when You Deliver A Fetus, You Get A Death Certificate, But Not A Birth Certificate. And Afterward, Your Milk Comes In, And There's Nothing You Can Do To Stop It.' She Looked Up At Me. 'you Can't Win. Either You Have The Baby And Wear Your Pain On The Outside, Or You Don't Have The Baby, And You Keep That Ache In You Forever. I Know I Didn't Do The Wrong Thing. But I Don't Feel Like I Did The Right Thing, Either.

When You’re Hurting Deeply, You Go Inward.

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

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John Foster Dulles

Charles M. Schulz

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