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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.

-Jodi Picoult

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What Was Wrong With

Jodi Picoult

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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.

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Everyone Thinks You Make Mistakes When You're Young. But I Don't Think We Make Any Fewer When We're Grown Up

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.

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

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.

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

I Don't Want To Tell People What To Think. I'm The Least Qualified Person In The World For That. If I'd Go Around Pretending To Be The Expert On Everything, I'd Become Dan Brown, And I Don't Understand That. We All Do Our Research If We're Good Writers, And We All Work Hard To Get It Right, But That Doesn't Mean We're Experts In The Field. The Best We Can Do Is Challenge People To Learn The Facts Themselves.

As For His Name, Well, What Attorney Wouldn't Want To Be Able Put A Judge In A Crate Every Now And Then?

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

Writing Workshop

Someone Once Told Me That When You Give Birth To A Daughter, You've Just Met The Person Whose Hand You'll Be Holding The Day You Die.

As Lacy Waited For Her Turn To Speak On Peter's Behalf, She Thought Back To The First Time She Realized She Could Hate Her Own Child.

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.

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.

She Understood What It Was Like To Stand Right In Front Of People You Loved, Even Though They Could Not See You.

Just Because You Didn't Put A Name To Something Did Not Mean It Wasn't There.

When I Was Little, The Great Mystery To Me Was Not How Babies Were Made, But Why?

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.

Lie To Yourself Until It's True.

The Truth Was, History Repeated Itself On A Daily Basis; Mistakes Were Made Over And Over. People Were Haunted By What They Had Done, And By What They Hadn't Had Time To Do.

Traveling Is All Very Well And Good As Long As You Knew There Is A Place Or Person You Can Call Home

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.

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.

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.

What If It Turns Out That A Life Isn’t Defined By Who You Belong To Or Where You Came From, By What You Wished For Or Whom You’ve Lost, But Instead By The Moments You Spend Getting From Each Of These Places To The Next?

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.

A Heroin-thin Boy With Enough Rings In His Eyebrows To Resemble A Shower Curtain Rod.

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.

All Writers Start With A Layer Of Truth, Don't They? If Not, Their Stories Would Be Nothing But Spools Of Cotton Candy, A Fleeting Taste Wrapped Around Nothing But Air.

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

My Sisters Keeper

In Poland, For A While, My Books All Had Cartoons On The Cover. I Trust My Publishers In Each Country To Know What Works In Their Individual Markets.

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.

When You Love Someone - When You Create A Child With Him - You Don't Just Suddenly Lose That Bond. Like Any Other Energy, It Can't Be Destroyed, Just Channeled Into Something Else.

When You Love Someone

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.

In This New Place We've Found, Sometimes There Aren't Words, Because The Truth Can Be Even More Difficult Than The Lies.

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.

Princes Don't Come Around Everyday, And Happy Endings Don't Grow On Trees

We're [parents]) Always Bluffing, Pretending We Know Best, When Most Of The Time We're Just Praying We Won't Screw Up Too Badly.

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.

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.

On A Really Dark Night, You Can See Between 1,000 And 1,500 Stars, And There Are Millions More That Haven't Been Discovered. It Is So Easy To Think That The World Revolves Around You, But All You Have To Do Is Stare Up At The Sky To Realize It Isn't That Way At All. -brian Fitzgerald

It's A Fallacy That Writers Have To Shut Themselves Up In Their Ivory Towers To Write. I Have All These Interruptions, Three Of Which I Gave Birth To. If I Was Thrown For A Loop Every Time I Was Distracted I Could Never Get Anything Done.

Peter Was, Simply, What A Person Would Look Like If You Boiled Down The Most Raw Emotions And Filtered Them Of Any Social Contract. If You Hurt, Cry. If You Rage, Strike Out. If You Hope, Get Ready For A Disappointment.

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.

The Problem Was , You Never Heard Anyone Say,"wow, Check Out The Brain On That Babe.

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

I Woke Up One Morning Thinking About Wolves And Realized That Wolf Packs Function As Families. Everyone Has A Role, And If You Act Within The Parameters Of Your Role, The Whole Pack Succeeds, And When That Falls Apart, So Does The Pack.

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

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.

I Would Have Given Anything To Keep Her Little. They Outgrow Us So Much Faster Than We Outgrow Them. Brian Fitzgerald, Talking About His Children.

Suddenly This Is All Too Hard. I Am Tired Of Putting Up Walls. I Want Someone With The Strength - And The Honesty - To Break Them Down.

Men. You Can't Live With Them...and You Can't Legally Shoot Them. I Tossed Out My Husband Eight Years Ago And Got A Llama Instead. Best Decision I Ever Made.

Life Sometimes Gets So Bogged Down In The Details, You Forget You Are Living It.

Parents Aren’t The People You Come From. They’re The People You Want To Be, When You Grow Up.

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

I Don't Want To Make The Same Mistake Twice. I Don't Want To Tell Myself It's Over When It's Not.

You Know, He Told Me Once, Completely Exasperated, You've Got One Glass Of Water Inside Your Head, With All The Tears For A Lifetime. If You Waste Them Over Nothing, Then You Won't Be Able To Cry For Real When You Need To.

Imagine If You Were The Positive Pole Of A Magnet, And You Were Told That Under No Circumstances Were You Allowed To Touch That Negative Pole That Was Sucking You In Like A Black Hole. Or If You Crawled Out Of The Desert And Found A Woman Standing With A Pitcher Of Ice Water, But She Held It Out Of Your Reach. Imagine Jumping Off A Building, And Then Being Told Not To Fall. That's What It Feels Like To Want A Drink.

The Wolves Knew When It Was Time To Stop Looking For What They'd Lost, To Focus Instead On What Was Yet To Come.

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.

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

When You're A Parent You Find Yourself Looking At The Unknown That Is Your Child, Trying To Find A Piece Of Yourself Inside Her, Because Sometimes That Is What It Takes To Claim.

Finding Yourself

I Am Not Keeping My Distance Because It Is Uncomfortable For Me, But Because It Is Uncomfortable For Them.

You Would Wind Up As A Cat, I Told Her. They Don't Need Anyone Else. I Need You, She Replied. Well, I Said. Maybe I'll Come Back As Catnip.

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!

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.

...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.

People Believed What They Wanted To Believe, No Matter What Was Right In Front Of Their Eyes.

My Favorite Part Of Any Event Is A Q&a. I Do Get Asked A Lot Of The Same Questions But Every Now And Then Someone Surprises Me - And I Love That.

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.

You Can't Exist In This World Without Leaving A Piece Of Yourself Behind.

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

You Need To Learn To Write On Demand, And To Get Critiqued Without Flinching. When Someone Can Rip Your Work To Shreds Without It Feeling As Though Your Arm Has Been Hacked Off, You're Ready To Send Your Novel Off To An Agent.

When You Care More If Someone Else Lives Than You Do About Yourself- Is That What [love Is]?

I Don't Base My Books On My Life (thank Goodness) And I Don't Pick The Topic First. In Fact, The Topic Picks Me - Via A Question I Can't Answer As A Mom, A Wife, A Woman, An American. I Find Myself Wondering "what If..." And It Blossoms Into A Whole Novel.

I Always Hated When My Scars Started To Fade, Because As Long As I Could Still See Them, I Knew Why I Was Hurting.

Things That Look Impossible Suddenly Seem A Lot Better, Once You Get God On Board.

That's What Happens To Dreams, Life Gets In The Way.

But Once You Throw A Stone, There Are Ripples In The Pond, Even If You Remove The Rock.

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

Maybe A Mother Wasn't What She Seemed To Be On The Surface.

Although You Hadn't Asked Why, It Had Less To Do With You Not Noticing Than With You Not Wanting To Hear The Answer.

Sometimes, When You Don't Ask Questions, It's Not Because You Are Afraid That Someone Will Lie To Your Face. It's Because You're Afraid They'll Tell You The Truth.

Here I Am, Wasting Away Inside A Book I Wish I Could Escape, And All She Wants To Do Is Stay In The Story. If I Could Talk To This Girl Delilah, I’d Ask Her Why On Earth She Would Ever Trade A Single Second Of The World She’s In For The One In Which I’m Stuck

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.

I Remember For That One Moment, I Believe I Was Hitch Hiking On One Of Those Comets, Falling So Fast That I'd Surely Burn Away Before I Ever Hit The Ground.

The Lord Turned Water Into Wine. All I'm Suggesting Is A Trip To The Grocery Store.

Unlike Elise, Who Could Discover Parts Of A Person They Didn't Even Know Were Absent, You Specialized In Tangible, But That, I Feared, Was Only A Matter Of Time.

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.

You Figured That The Only Way I'd Be Happy Is If I Did The Things You Thought Would Be Best For Me.

It Is Always Hardest For Me To Write A Book That Has Kids In It Close To My Kids' Ages. It Is Always Hardest For Me To Write A Book That Has Kids In It Close To My Kids' Ages.

Everytime I Look At A Zebra, I Can't Figure Out Whether It's Black With White Stripes Or White With Black Stripes, And That Frustrates Me.

Any Time You Put On The Mouthpiece Of Somebody That You're Not, There's A Professional Responsibility To Get It Right. I Did A Great Deal Of Research In Both Of Those Arenas.

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

A Lie, As You Probably Know, Has A Taste All Its Own. Blocky And Bitter And Never Quite Right, Like When You Pop A Piece Of Fancy Chocolate Into Your Mouth Expecting Toffee Filling And You Get Lemon Zest Instead.

Mistakes Are Like The Memories You Hide In An Attic: Old Love Letters From Relationships That Tanked, Photos Of Dead Relatives, Toys From A Childhood You Miss. Out Of Sight Is Out Of Mind, But Somewhere Deep Inside You Know They Still Exist. And You Also Know That You're Avoiding Them.

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.

How Foolish It Is To Run Away With A Man Who's Already Run Away With Someone Else.

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

I've Never Been In Love, But I've Always Imagined It--weirdly--like Some Sort Of Oxiclean Commercial. The Tv Host Shows A Scene From An Ordinary Day, And Then Takes A Big Old Sponge Soaked In Love And Swipes Away The Stains. Suddenly That Same Scene Is Missing All The Mistakes, All The Loneliness. The Colors Are Like Jewels, Ten Times Richer Than They Were Before. The Music Is Louder And Clearer. "love," The Host Will Say, "makes Life A Little Brighter.

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

Logical Thinking Keeps You From Wasting Time Worrying, Or Hoping. It Prevents Disappointment. Imagination, On The Other Hand, Only Gets You Hyped Up Over Things That Will Never Realistically Happen.

This Was The Reason There Was Music, He Realized. There Were Some Feelings That Didn't Have Words Big Enough To Describe Them.

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.

Imagine A World That Seemed So Much Bigger Than You. Imagine Waking Up One Morning And Finding A Piece Of Yourself You Didn't Even Know Existed.

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.

How Do You Know That You Are Not Part Of A Book? That Someone's Not Reading Your Story Right Now?

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.

That's Why We Read Fiction, Isn't It? To Remind Us That Whatever We Suffer, We're Not The Only Ones?

She Wondered If This Was True Of Every Parent: If, Prior To Having Children, They All Used To Be Someone Else.

The World Just Feels Different For Those Of Us Who Come Alive After Dark. It's More Fragile And Unreal, A Replica Of The One Everyone Else Inhabits.

History Could Hover, Like A Faint Perfume Or A Memory Stamped On The Back Of One's Eyelids.

Sometimes When You Find Something You Didn't Really Realize You Were Looking For, You Just Don't Know How To React.

I Know That Books I Have Written Will Still Resonate In 50 Years - Particularly 'my Sister's Keeper.' It Has Sold Three Million Copies In The States Alone. I Strongly Feel That, As A Novelist, You Have A Platform And The Ability To Change People's Minds.

Happiness Is What You Choose To Remember.

You Can Widen The Feet Of A Compass, But They Are Still Attached At The Top; You Can Spin Them Away From Each Other, But You Always Wind Up Where You Started.

The Thing That Most People Didn't Understand, If They Weren't In His Line If Work, Was That A Rape Victim And A Victim Of A Fatal Accident Were Both Gone Forever. The Difference Was That The Rape Victim Still Had To Go Through The Motions Of Being Alive.

There's Some Illogical Part Of Me That Still Believes If You Want Superman To Show Up, First There's Got To Be Someone Worth Saving.

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

There Are Two Ways To Be Happy: Improve Your Reality, Or Lower Your Expectations.

If His Voice Hasn't Been The Melody Of My Life, It's Been The Bass Line, So Subtle You Don't Notice It Until It's Missing.

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

Knowing Someone

I’d Much Rather Pretend I’m Somewhere Else, And Any Time I Open The Pages Of A Book, That Happens.

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

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.

My Mother Moves So Fast I Do Not Even See It Coming. But She Slaps My Face Hard Enough To Make My Head Snap Backward. She Leaves A Print That Stains Me Long After It’s Faded. Just So You Know: Shame Is Five-fingered.

I Found Plain Truth Very Interesting.

Very Interesting

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.

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.

A Place Like This Wears Down Everything, And Tolerance Is No Exception. In Here, Coexistence Passes For Forgiveness. You Do Not Learn To Like Something You Abhor; You Come To Live With It...you Live And Let Live, And Eventually That Becomes Enough.

Live And Let Live

There's No Way To Convince Her That Just Because You Put Half. Planet Between You And Someone Else, You Can't Drive That Person Out Of Your Thoughts. Believe Me. I've Tried.

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

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

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.

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

If Words Had Flavors, Hers Would Be Bitter Almonds And Coffee Grounds.

If You Tell Yourself You Feel Fine, You Will.

I Never Lose Sight Of The Fact That Before I Was A Writer, I Was A Teacher. I Still Am. My Classroom's Just Gotten A Little Bigger.

They're Fake Bullets, So Why Do I Feel Like Im Bleeding Out?

As A Child, What I Was Missing Was So Much Bigger To Me Than What I Had. My Mother-mythic, Imaginary-was A Deity And A Superhero And A Comfort All At Once. If Only I'd Had Her, Surely, She Would Have Been The Answer To Every Problem; If Only I'd Had Her , She Would Have Been The Cure For Everything That Ever Had Gone Wrong In My Life.

What We All Want, Really, Is To Be Loved. That Craving Drives Our Worst Behavior.

I Am An Activist. I Have A Really Big Pulpit With My Fiction And I Love Knowing That I Can Make People Think.

You Can Touch Everything And Be Connected To Nothing.

Ask A Kid Who's Struggling In Math If He Likes Being In A Mixed-level Class, And He'll Tell You He Feels Like A Moron. Ask The Math Genius If He Likes Being In A Mixed-level Class, And He'll Tell You He's Sick Of Doing All The Work During Group Projects. Sometimes, It's Better To Sort Like With Like.

I Love Meeting My Readers - So The More I Can Talk To At One Event The Better!

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

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.

Sometimes You Can See Things Happen Right In Front Of Your Eyes And Still Jump To The Wrong Conclusions.

A Lot Of The Hallmark Behaviors Of Autism - Flat Affect, Stimming, Not Looking Someone In The Eye - Could Very Easily Be Misinterpreted As Signs Of Guilt.

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

I Drew It Over My Skin Like A Violins Bow, No One Would Ever Hear The Song Of My Shame.

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

My Sisters Keeper

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

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.

It's Never The Differences Between People That Suprise Us. It's The Things That, Against All Odds, We Have In Common.

Just Because You Had Every Right To Feel Sorry For Yourself Didn't Mean You Ever Took The Opportunity To Do So.

But This Is Inaccurate. A Runaway Train Is An Accident. Me, I'll Jump In Front Of The Tracks. I'll Even Tie Myself Down In Front Of The Speeding Engine. There's Some Illogical Part Of Me Hat Still Believes If You Want Superman To Show Up, First There's Got To Be Someone Worth Saving.

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

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

I Try Really Hard To Ask People To Take A Look At Their Bookshelves. Are There Female Writers On It? Gay Writers? Writers Of Color? There Should Be.

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.

Then Henry Speaks Again. "did He Do It?" I Turn To Him Slowly. "does It Matter?

Q: How Would You Like Your Eggs In The Morning? A: Unfertilized

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

If You Want To Love A Parent You Have To Understand The Incredible Investment He Or She Has In You. If You Are A Parent, And You Want To Be Loved, You Have To Deserve It.

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

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.

Isn’t That What True Romance Is Supposed To Be About? Finding The Person Who’s Your Soul Mate. Someone You Dream About At Night.someone Whose Name Is On Your Lips When You Wake Up In The Morning.

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

A Lie Took Two Parties - The Weaver Of The Tale And The Sucker Who So Badly Wanted To Believe It.

When You Want Something So Desperately, You Shake With The Need For It. You Tell Yourself That You Don't Need More Than One Sip, Because It's Just The Taste You Crave, And Once It's On Your Tongue You Will Be Able To Make It Last Alifetime. You Dream Of It At Night. You See A Thousand Mile-high Obstacles Between Where You Stand And What You Want, And You Convince Yourself You Have The Power To Hurdle Them. You Tell Yourself This Even When, Leaping The First Block, You Wind Up Bruised And Bloodied And Flattened.

Dante Believed God Punished Suicides By Trapping The Person's Spirit In A Tree Trunk. On Judgment Day, They Were The Only Sinners Who Didn't Get Their Souls Back, Because They Tried To Get Rid Of Them Once Before.

What’s The Difference Between Spending Your Life Trying To Be Invisible, Or Pretending To Be The Person You Think Everyone Wants You To Be? Either Way, You’re Faking.

It's Just Like Nurses In A Hospital Tend To Know More Than The Doctors Most Of The Time; If You Really Want To Get The Answers To A Question About Court, You Should Spend More Time Buttering Up The Clerks Than The Judges.

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.

With These Words Jake Had Let Go Of Me. Which Proved That He Knew More About Why I Was Leaving Than Even I Did. I Had Believed That I Was Running Away From What Had Happened. I Did Not Know, Not Until I Met Nicholas Days Later, That The Whole Time I Was Really Running Towards What Was Yet To Be.

The Person May Have A Scar, But It Also Means They Have A Story

When You [lose Someone], It Feels Like The Hole In Your Gum When A Tooth Falls Out. You Can Chew, You Can Eat, You Have Plenty Of Other Teeth, But Your Tongue Keeps Going Back To That Empty Place, Where All Nerves Are Still A Little Raw

I Think We Deserve A Happily-ever-after." "if Anyone Ever Did, It's Us.

I Realize How Quickly Lies Compound. They Cover Like A Coat Of Paint, One On Top Of The Other, Until You Cannot Remember What Color You Started With.

The Only Person Who Suffers, When You Squirrel Alway All That Hate, Is You.

There Is A Fine Line Between Seeing Something That's Lost As Missing, And Seeing It As Something That Might Be Found.

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

Just So You Know, When They Say "once Upon A Time” . . . They’re Lying

Once Upon A Time

Between The Lines

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.

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

Perfectly Normal

Is It Because They Are So Comfortable, They Already Know What The Other Is Thinking? Or Is It Because After A Certain Point, There Is Simply Nothing Left To Say?

An Apology With A Defense Built In Isn't Much Of An Apology

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.

When Someone Loves You Up One Side And Down The Other Like That, You Make Every Effort To Stick Around.

We Believe What We Want To, What We Need To. The Corollary Is That We Choose Not To See What We'd Rather Pretend Doesn't Exist.

We Could All Be Lucky. We Could All Be What We Want To Be, Instead Of Who Someone Else Told Us To Be.

[i] Don't Think I Was Trying To Kill Myself. I Just Wanted To Hurt, And Understand Exactly Whay I Was Hurting. This Made Sense: You Cut, You Felt Pain, Period.

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

Justification Is A Remarkable Thing-takes All Those Solid Lines And Blurs Them, So That Honor Becomes As Supple As A Willow, And Ethics Burst Like Soap Bubbles.

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

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.

Does Fate Ever Play By The Rules?

Things Had A Way Of Working Out For The Best When You Let Them Run Their Course.

Men Don't Traipse. We... Swagger

A Lie, As You Probably Know, Has A Taste All Its Own. Blocky And Bitter And Never Quite Right.

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Christopher McDougall

Monica Lewinsky

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