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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.

-Jodi Picoult

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When You Don't Fit

Jodi Picoult

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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.

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Helping Someone

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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?

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

When It's All Over, You're Remembered For What You Did, Not What You Said You Were Going To Do.

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

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.

The Weapons An Author Has At Her Disposal Are Flawed. There Are Words That Feel Shapeless And Overused. Love, For Example. I Could Write The Word Love A Thousand Times And It Would Mean A Thousand Different Things To Different Readers.

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.

I Don't Have To Live The Lives Of My Characters To Write About Them. It's About Really Putting Yourself In Their Shoes.

If You Want To See God Laugh, Make A Plan.

Eskimos Maybe? Believed Stars Were Holes In The Sky Where People Who Died Could Peek Through At You

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.

Everyone Deserves A Happy Ending.

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?

Life Isn't Nearly As Stable As We Want It To Be.

My Sisters Keeper

For Better Or For Worse, Music Is The Language Of Memory. It Is Also The Language Of Love.

Language Of Love

Wheather It Is Conscious Or Not, You Eventually Make The Decision To Divide Your Life In Half - Before And After - With Loss Being That Tight Bubble In The Middle. You Can Move Around In Spite Of It; You Can Laugh And Smile And Carry On With Your Life, But All It Takes Is One Slow Range Of Motion, A Doubling Over, To Be Fully Aware Of The Empty Space At Your Center.

Houses Are Cellular Walls; They Keep Our Problems From Bleeding Into Everyone Else's.

Everyone Knew That If You Divided Reality By Expectation, You Got A Happiness Quotient. But When You Invert The Equation - Expectation Divided By Reality - You Didn't Get The Opposite Of Happiness. What You Got, Lewis Realized, Was Hope.

There's A Lot Of Things You Can't See If You Aren't' Looking.

It's Certainly My Honor To Be Able To, Hopefully, Change The World A Tiny Bit, One Mind At A Time.

The Letters Are Mixed Up. U And I Should Be Together.

Lawyers Were Notorious For Finding Cases In The Most Unlikely Places, Especially Ones With Huge Potential Damagers Awards.

I Don't Know Whether You Can Look At Your Past And Find, Woven Like The Hidden Symbols On A Treasure Map, The Path That Will Point To Your Final Destination.

They Say That There Are Moments That Open Up Your Life Like A Walnut Cracked, That Change Your Point Of View So That You Never Look At Things The Same Way Again.

But Rules Only Work When Everyone Plays By Them. What Happens When Someone Doesn't, And The Fallout Bleeds Right Into His Life? Whats Stronger- The Need To Uphold The Law, Or The Motive To Turn One's Back On It?

There Are Some Nights When You Just Want To Know There's Someone Else Besides You In This Wide World.

I Think The 'new York Times' Reviews Overall Tend To Overlook Popular Fiction, Whether You're A Man, Woman, White, Black, Purple Or Pink. I Think There Are A Lot Of Readers Who Would Like To See Reviews That Belong In The Range Of Commercial Fiction Rather Than Making The Blanket Assumption That All Commercial Fiction Is Unworthy.

...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.

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

I Used To Think I'd Be Just Like Them When I Grew Up, But I Am Not. And The Thing Is, Somewhere Along The Way, I Stopped Wanting To Be Like Them, Anyway.

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

You Would Be Surprised At The Lengths You Will Go To Believe The Best About Someone If You Truly Love Him

You Can Argue That It's A Different World Now Than The One When Matthew Shepard Was Killed, But There Is A Subtle Difference Between Tolerance And Acceptance. It's The Distance Between Moving Into The Cul-de-sac And Having Your Next Door Neighbor Trust You To Keep An Eye On Her Preschool Daughter For A Few Minutes While She Runs Out To The Post Office. It's The Chasm Between Being Invited To A Colleague's Wedding With Your Same-sex Partner And Being Able To Slow-dance Without The Other Guests Whispering.

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.

After A Certain Point, A Heart With So Many Stress Fractures Can Never Be Anything But Broken.

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