Reba

“I once read an article about that,” Melina said. “When women talk twenty-five percent of the time in a room, people think it feels balanced. If they talk twenty-five to fifty percent of the time, it’s seen as monopolizing the discussion.” “Maybe if men were smarter, we wouldn’t have to keep explaining for that other twenty-five percent,” Letitia huffed.”
― Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

“That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know how.” Her father rubbed his hand over his jaw. “God, I loved your mother. But she was very, very sick. And even so, I wouldn’t have traded a single moment of the time I had with her. Not even when she was throwing up or when she cried herself to sleep. Love isn’t Hallmark movies, Melina. It’s Jeopardy! but with categories so narrow only two people in the whole world know the answers. Have you seen my reading glasses? and Do I have a tick on my back? and Will you be there for me when it’s time for me to go?” He shook his head, laughing ruefully. “Mind you, when people say this is what your mom would have wanted for me, I don’t believe a word of it. Your mother would have come at me with a hatchet at the thought of me with some other woman. But…I also think she’d forgive me.” A small smile ghosted over his face. “Because that’s what best friends do.”
― Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

“When I was little, I wanted to live in a library. Everything seemed so loud in my head, & libraries were always quiet. It was devastating to learn that the librarians didn’t actually sleep overnight in the stacks.”
― Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

“I think Shakespeare let people see what they wanted to see, and only a handful of people knew he was not the actual writer. He was just fronting plays for others who used his name. I think the theater community was in on it. When they saw a play with the name Shakespeare on it, it was an inside joke. But over four hundred years later, we’ve forgotten the punch line.”
― Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name