Jen > Jen's Quotes

“You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“A photo says, you were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, you were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.”
― Jodi Picoult

“Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“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.”
― Jodi Picoult

“Love is not a because, it's a no matter what.”
― Jodi Picoult, Second Glance

“Something still exists as long as there's someone around to remember it.”
― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes

“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.”
― Jodi Picoult, Perfect Match

“Suddenly I realize that this is what I've been waiting for - a man who depends entirely on me... I dreamed for years of a man who couldn't live without me, a man who pictured my face when he closed his eyes, who loved me when I was a mess in the morning and when dinner was late and even when I overloaded the washing machine and burned out the motor. [My son] stares up at me as if I can do no wrong. I have always wanted someone who treats me the way he does; I just didn't know that I'd have to give birth to him.”
― Jodi Picoult, Harvesting the Heart

“That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“I once heard someone on a bus say that this guy had gotten under her skin. And it struck me as a remarkable thought - that someone would affect you so deeply they'd always be a part of you.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mercy

“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.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“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.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.”
― Jodi Picoult , Handle with Care

“(24/7) once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“In my previous life I was a civil attorney. At one point I truly believed that was what I wanted to be- but that was before I'd been handed a fistful of crushed violets from a toddler. Before I understood that the smile of a child is a tattoo: indelible art. ”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“When you are pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your lifet rying to figure out how to keep her close enough for for comfort.”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“Parents aren’t the people you come from. They’re the people you want to be, when you grow up.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again, yet after having given birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep it close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one.”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“What makes you walk past thirty-thousand people without a second glance, and then you look at the thirty-thousandth-and-first person and know you'll never take your eyes off her again?”
― Jodi Picoult, Second Glance

“The best place to cry is on a mother's arms.”
― Jodi Picoult, House Rules

“A jewel's just a rock put under enourmous heat and pressure. Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Parents aren't the people you come from. They're the people you want to be, when you grow up.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“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, My Sister's Keeper

“Frankly, I wonder who Frank was, and why he has an adverb all to himself.”
― Jodi Picoult, House Rules

“Rest easy, real mothers. The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.”
― Jodi Picoult, House Rules

“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.”
― Jodi Picoult, House Rules

“I personally subscribe to the belief that normal is just a setting on the dryer.”
― Jodi Picoult, House Rules

“But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just like people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is just like an old time rail journey ... delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.”
― Jenkin Lloyd Jones