110+ Jodi Picoult Quotes On Mors, Writing And Family

Jodi Picoult is an American author of twenty-three novels. She is known for tackling controversial and complex issues in her books, such as race, religion, and death. Her novels often feature characters with conflicting points of view, and she has sold over fourteen million copies of her books worldwide. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Jodi Picoult on love, mors, writing.

Top 10 Jodi Picoult Quotes

1. 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.
2. Love is not a because, it's a no matter what.
3. The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.
4. There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.
5. There's always going to be bad stuff out there. But here's the amazing thing -- light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into the light.
6. You can't look back - you just have to put the past behind you, and find something better in your future.
7. If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?
8. Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.
9. The wolves knew when it was time to stop looking for what they'd lost, to focus instead on what was yet to come.
10. ‎Pick ten strangers and stick them in a room, and ask them which of us they feel sorrier for - you or me - and we all know who they'll choose.

Jodi Picoult Short Quotes

• Like a missing tooth, sometimes an absence is more noticeable than a presence.
• And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in masquerade.
• If words had flavors, hers would be bitter almonds and coffee grounds.
• Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.
• One person's trauma is another's loss of innocence.
• That's the paradox of loss: How can something that's gone weigh us down so much?
• Lies were only as strong as the suckers that believed them.
• You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal?... A plan.
• Life sometimes gets so bogged down in the details, you forget you are living it.
• Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.

Jodi Picoult Quotes About Love

I know what love is. When you find the person you are supposed to love, bells ring and fireworks go off in your head and you can't find the words to speak and you think about him all the time. When you find the person you are supposed to love, you will know by staring deeply into their eyes. — Jodi Picoult

When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it's safe inside your mouth. — Jodi Picoult

Three months ago, if you asked me, I would have told you that if you really loved someone, you’d let them go. But now I look at you, and I dreamed about Maggie, and I see that I’ve been wrong. If you really love someone, Allie, I think you have to take them back. — Jodi Picoult

People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more. — Jodi Picoult

You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride. — Jodi Picoult

For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love. — Jodi Picoult

The Inuit say that the stars are holes in heaven. And every time we see the people we loved shining through, we know they're happy. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

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? — Jodi Picoult

I don’t think anyone who falls in love has a choice. You’re just pulled to that person like true north, whether it’s good for you or bound to break your heart. — Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult Quotes About Writing

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page. — Jodi Picoult

When you finally start to write something, do not let yourself stop...even when you are convinced it's the worst garbage ever. This is the biggest caveat for beginning writers. Instead, force yourself to finish what you began, and THEN go back and edit it. — Jodi Picoult

I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands. — Jodi Picoult

Writing is grunt work - you need to have self-motivation, perseverance, and faith... talent is the smallest part of it. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

I feel I'm able to get rid of any demons lurking in my psyche through my writing, which leaves me free to create all of this and to enjoy our family life, stepping away from all the fictional traumas and the dramas. If I write about family in crisis, then I won't have to live through it, I guess. — Jodi Picoult

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! — Jodi Picoult

Every year I tell myself that I'm not going to read any reviews and then I do. We're all human and when I read something negative it hurts. I think when you write it's part of the game, you're going to get some good reviews and some bad reviews and that's how it goes. I don't write for the reviews. — Jodi Picoult

I write about all the horrible things that can happen to kids as a way of keeping those things from happening to mine. Write the books, spit three times over your shoulder and you're safe. — Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult Quotes About Family

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. — Jodi Picoult

In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn; color your hair; watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five. In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world; or you can just jump off it. — Jodi Picoult

No matter what Joe Hoffman and Wade Preston say, it's not gender that makes a family; it's love. You don't need a mother and a father; you don't necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who's got your back. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

I used to pretend that I was just passing through this family on my way to my real one. — Jodi Picoult

In my family, we seem to have a tortured history of not saying what we ought to and not meaning what we do. — Jodi Picoult

My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together? Bread, of course. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

The first time someone I loved left me behind...I didn't know how my family would balance. We had been such a sturdy little end table, four solid legs. I was sure we would now be off-kilter, always unstable. Until one day I looked more closely, and realized that we had simply become a stool. — Jodi Picoult

My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn't a social construct but an instinct. — Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult Quotes About Write

I don't have to live the lives of my characters to write about them. It's about really putting yourself in their shoes. — Jodi Picoult

I'm always writing, even when I'm not at my desk. I write on my hands. I used to write on my kids' hands, too, but they don't let me any more. When I'm driving I sometimes write all the way up my arms. — Jodi Picoult

Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write. — Jodi Picoult

If you read the first page of one of my novels, I can guarantee that you will read the last one. This isn't just social commentary. This is also about writing good page-turners. I want people to keep reading. — Jodi Picoult

I started writing when I had three kids under the age of 4. I used to write every ten minutes I got to sit in front of a computer. Now, when I have more time, I function the same way: if it's writing time, I write. — Jodi Picoult

I'm not going to tell a person how to think, don't believe in that. What I want to do, when I write these books, is just to say don't be so sure of yourself. Let me pull the carpet out from underneath you, and let's see if you can still find the footing. — Jodi Picoult

The question I hate the most is "How did you DO it - write novels and raise your children simultaneously!" I mean, do MALE authors get asked that?? — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

I don't write the same book over and over - I think if I did that, I would stop writing. I couldn't write a series with the same character, and I couldn't write a romance novel over and over again that takes place at a different beach every year. That's not who I am. — Jodi Picoult

The way I challenge myself is by writing something that really engages me, that doesn't have an easy answer, and isn't always an easy book to write. — Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult Quotes About People

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. — Jodi Picoult

Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them. — Jodi Picoult

I think that ordinary people who are placed in extraordinary circumstances find themselves pushed beyond their limits, and learn new truths about themselves. — Jodi Picoult

There are millions of people in the world, and the spirits will see that most of them you never have to meet. But there are one or two you are tied to, and the spirits will cross you back and forth, threading so many knots until they catch and you finally get it right. — Jodi Picoult

People ask all the time how I'm doing, but the truth is, they don't really want to know. — Jodi Picoult

Superheroes were born in the minds of people desperate to be rescued. — Jodi Picoult

When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't. — Jodi Picoult

But you could only remake your own future, not anyone else's, and for some people that just wasn't good enough. — Jodi Picoult

There was no black or white. Someone who had been good her entire life could, in fact, do something evil. People were just as capable of committing murder, under the right circumstances, as any monster. — Jodi Picoult

Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look. — Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult Quotes About Books

In books, you always know what's coming next. There are no surprises. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

I think many of my books, including 'Handle with Care,' including 'My Sister's Keeper,' circle back to how far are we willing to go for the people we love? I think love changes the way we think. It's the thing that takes you out of what your normal set of beliefs would be. — Jodi Picoult

It's because of libraries that books like mine get recommended to book clubs and avid readers, who in turn pass them onto others looking to be whisked away from the world for a little while...and perhaps to learn a bit about themselves in the process. — Jodi Picoult

I haven't run out of ideas yet. Usually while I'm working on a book, I'm doing research for the next one! — Jodi Picoult

Fiction allows for moral questioning, but through the back door. Personally, I like books that make you think - books you're still wondering about three days after you finish them; books you hand to a friend and say "Read this, so we can talk about it." — Jodi Picoult

The book that made me want to be a writer in the first place was Gone with the Wind - I read it and wanted to create a whole world out of words, too. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

I love getting fan mail. Often, as a writer, you never know what your readers think of a book... you get critical reviews and sales figures, but none of that is the same as knowing you've made a person stay up all night reading, or helped them have a good cry, or really touched their life. — Jodi Picoult

Many of my books come from what if questions that I can't answer, things that I'm worried about as either a woman, a wife, a mom, an American. — Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult Quotes About Kids

What I want, more than anything, is to turn back time a little. To become the kid I used to be, who believed whatever my mother said was one hundred percent true and right without looking hard enough to see the hairline crack. — Jodi Picoult

Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut. — Jodi Picoult

Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they don't want their kids... but when you look more closely, you realize that they're doing those kids a favor. They're just trying to give them a better life. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

Parenting is really just a matter of tracking, of hoping your kids do not get so far ahead you can no longer see their next moves. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

Remember when you were a little kid and you'd fall asleep in the car? And someone would carry you out and put you into bed, so that when you woke up in the morning, you knew automatically you were home again? That's what I think it's like to die. — Jodi Picoult

And that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through. — Jodi Picoult

When you are a kid you have your own language, and unlike French or Spanish or whatever you start learning in fourth grade, this one you are born with, and eventually lose...Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult...is only a slow sewing it shut. — Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult Famous Quotes And Sayings

I can give or take elephants; I never can find the cheetah-but the zebras captivate me. They'd be one of the few things that would fit if we were lucky enough to live in a world that's black or white. — Jodi Picoult

When this is over...we will got to the rainforest, or a beach as white as bone. We will eat grapes from the vine, we will swim with sea turtles, we will walk miles on cobblestone streets. We will laugh and talk and confess. We will. — Jodi Picoult

I always hated when my scars started to fade, because as long as I could still see them, I knew why I was hurting. — Jodi Picoult

Things break all the time. Glass and dishes and fingernails. Cars and contracts and potato chips. You can break a record, a horse, a dollar. You can break the ice. There are coffee breaks and lunch breaks and prison breaks. Day breaks, waves break, voices break. Chains can be broken. So can silence, and fever... promises break. Hearts break. — Jodi Picoult

Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall. — Jodi Picoult

Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

Researching 'Lone Wolf,' I was amazed at how thoughtful and intelligent these animals are. There has never been a documented attack against a human by a wolf that wasn't provoked by the human. — Jodi Picoult

Just because you didn't speak the facts out loud didn't erase their existence. Silence was just a quieter way to lie. — Jodi Picoult

Beliefs are the roads we take to our dreams. Believe you can do something-or believe you can't-and you'll be right everytime. — Jodi Picoult

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

A duck walks into a bar and the bartender asks, what'll it be? The duck doesn't answer because it's a duck. — Jodi Picoult

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

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

Life can change in an instant; don't be so worried about the future that you forget to celebrate what you have right now. — Jodi Picoult

I believe that having something to hope for - even if it's just a better tomorrow- is the most powerful drug on this planet. — Jodi Picoult

To say there had been a loss was ludicrous; one lost a shoe or a set of keys. You did not suffer the death of a child and say there was a loss. There was a catastrophe. A devastation. A hell. — Jodi Picoult

You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. But it's a catch-22: all of those things you're willing to lose are what make you recognizable. Lose them, and you've lost yourself. — Jodi Picoult

You'd think someone who'd been to medical school would be able to hear through a stethoscope that somebody was empty inside. — Jodi Picoult

All I know is that I carried you for nine months. I fed you, I clothed you, I paid for your college education. Friending me on Facebook seems like a small thing to ask in return. — Jodi Picoult

When was the last time someone read aloud to you? Probably when you were a child, and if you think back, you'll remember how safe you felt, tucked under the covers, or curled in someone's arms, as a story was spun around you like a web. — Jodi Picoult

And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt. — Jodi Picoult

If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled? — Jodi Picoult

Everyone has a story; everyone hides his past as a means of self-preservation. Some just do it better, and more thoroughly, than others. — Jodi Picoult

Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future. — Jodi Picoult

You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you like a forked road, and even as you choose one gritty path you've got your eyes on the other the whole time, certain that you're making a mistake. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

Things that break - be they bones, hearts, or promises - can be put back together but will never really be whole. — Jodi Picoult

How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury? — Jodi Picoult

never trust a man who wears a pinkie ring. . . the only jewelry a guy should wear is a wedding band or a super bowl ring — Jodi Picoult

Coop kissed me deeply, drawing my breath from me in a long, sweet ribbon. "Perhaps I haven't mentioned it, but I'm an expert when it comes to first steps." Are you," I said. "Then tell me how." You close your eyes," Coop answered, "and jump. — Jodi Picoult

I watch her do the simplest things: brushing her hair into a ponytail, feeding the dog, tying Sophie's shoelaces, and I want to tell her what she means to me, but I never actually say the words. After all, to acknowledge Delia as a drug, I'd have to face the fact that one day I might have to go without her and this I can't do. — Jodi Picoult

My first job was as an assistant in the local library. Self-fulfilling prophecy? — Jodi Picoult

Sometimes we find ourselves walking through life blindfolded, and we try to deny that we're the ones who securely tied the knot. — Jodi Picoult

The jury is supposed to be twelve peers, but technically that would mean every single person on the jury should have Asperger's syndrome, because then they'd really understand me. — Jodi Picoult

Bleeding heart, he’d called her. Well. He should know. He’d been the first to rip it to pieces. — Jodi Picoult

There's that unwritten schism that literary writers get all the awards and commericals writers get all the success. — Jodi Picoult

Music therapy, to me, is music performance without the ego. It's not about entertainment as much as its about empathizing. If you can use music to slip past the pain and gather insight into the workings of someone else's mind, you can begin to fix a problem. — Jodi Picoult

Don't pay back in kind, pay back in kindness. If someone does wrong by you, do right by them. — Jodi Picoult

In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who loses a child. — Jodi Picoult

The act of reading is a partnership. The author builds a house, but the reader makes it a home. — Jodi Picoult

I think once you sign on to be a mother, that's the only shift they offer. — Jodi Picoult

Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions. — Jodi Picoult

We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which. — Jodi Picoult

Where you come from does matter -- but not nearly as much as where you are headed. — Jodi Picoult

We Pisces, we're a special breed. — Jodi Picoult

What he did was wrong. He doesn't deserve your love. But he does deserve your forgiveness, because otherwise he will grow like a weed in your heart until it's choked and overrun. The only person who suffers, when you squirrel away all that hate, is you. — Jodi Picoult

But there is a different between mending someone who's broken and finding someone who makes you complete. — Jodi Picoult

Religion isn't in your DNA. you don't believe just because your parents believe. — Jodi Picoult

Part of growing up was learning not to be quite that honest - learning when it was better to lie, rather than to hurt someone with the truth. — Jodi Picoult

true love is felonious… You take someone’s breath away… You rob them of the ability to utter a single word… You steal a heart. — Jodi Picoult

There's no way to explain to a child that the line between good and evil isn't nearly as black and white as a fairy tale would lead you to believe. That an ordinary person can turn into a villain, under the right circumstances. That sometimes we dragon slayers do things we aren't proud of. — Jodi Picoult

I don't know what it is about death that makes it so hard. I suppose it's the one-sided communication; the fact that we never get to ask our loved one if she suffered, if she is happy wherever she is now...if she is somewhere. It's the question mark that comes with death that we can't face, not the period. — Jodi Picoult

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. — Jodi Picoult

I'm grateful for my children, who are slowly emerging to become their own wonderful, interesting, compassionate young adults - which makes me believe that along the way I must have done something right. — Jodi Picoult

Chicken,' Josie said. 'Have you ever been in love?' Peter looked at Josie, and thought of how they had once tied a note with their addresses to a helium balloon and let it go in her backyard, certain it would reach Mars. Instead, they had received a letter from a widow who lived two blocks away. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I think so. — Jodi Picoult

I think there are crossroads in our lives when we make grand, sweeping decisions without even realizing it. — Jodi Picoult

The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it. — Jodi Picoult

So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was substance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream. — Jodi Picoult

It never failed to amaze me how the most ordinary day could be catapulted into the extraordinary in the blink of an eye. — Jodi Picoult

I closed my eyes and curled my fists around the things I knew for sure: That a scallop has thirty-five eyes, all blue. That a tuna will suffocate if it ever stops swimming. That I was loved. That this time, it was not me who broke — Jodi Picoult

Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under the chalk, the ground that buildings rise, and the oxygen in the air. It is the place you come back to, no matter where your headed — Jodi Picoult

There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. We tell ourselves that it's the right thing to do, the altruistic thing to do. It's far easier than telling ourselves the truth. — Jodi Picoult

You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not. — Jodi Picoult

The best place to cry is on a mother's arms. — Jodi Picoult

The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark... Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas - a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak. — Jodi Picoult

Life Lessons by Jodi Picoult

1. Jodi Picoult's work demonstrates the importance of empathy and understanding in difficult situations, showing that even when two sides have opposing views, there is still a chance to find common ground.
2. Picoult's work also highlights the power of storytelling, and how it can be used to explore complex topics and bring attention to important issues.
3. Through her characters and stories, Picoult emphasizes the importance of open dialogue and communication, reminding us that there is always room for growth and understanding.