Top 500 Jodi Picoult Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Rest easy, real mothers. The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.”

— Jodi Picoult

52. “I think her flaws make me love her even more. She’s not perfect, but she’s perfect to me.”

— Jodi Picoult

53. “I don’t want to make the same mistake twice. I don’t want to tell myself it’s over when it’s not.”

— Jodi Picoult

54. “If you want to see God laugh, make a plan.”

— Jodi Picoult

55. “Lie to yourself until it’s true.”

— Jodi Picoult

56. “Some people, they get down in a hole so deep they can’t figure out what to hold on to.”

— Jodi Picoult

57. “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.”

— Jodi Picoult

58. “Knowledge was power, but a good librarian did not hoard the gift. She taught others how to find, where to look, how to see.”

— Jodi Picoult

59. “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.”

— Jodi Picoult

60. “Is Fate getting what you deserve, or deserving what you get?”

— Jodi Picoult

61. “You don’t need water to feel like you’re drowning, do you?”

— Jodi Picoult

62. “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

63. “Superheroes were born in the minds of people desperate to be rescued.”

— Jodi Picoult

64. “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

65. “Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions.”

— Jodi Picoult

66. “The wolves knew when it was time to stop looking for what they’d lost, to focus instead on what was yet to come.”

— Jodi Picoult

67. “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

68. “He smiles at me, and I am suddenly seventeen again – the year I realize that love doesn’t follow the rules, the year I understood that nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable.”

— Jodi Picoult

69. “You get through it, you just never get over it.”

— Jodi Picoult

70. “On the other hand, I think cats have Asperger’s. Like me, they’re very smart. And like me, sometimes they simply need to be left alone.”

— Jodi Picoult

71. “Why are you doing this to yourself? When something bad happens, why do you have to pick at it until it bleeds all over again?”

— Jodi Picoult

72. “Where you come from does matter – but not nearly as much as where you are headed.”

— Jodi Picoult

73. “The desperate usually succeed because they have nothing to lose.”

— Jodi Picoult

74. “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

75. “What is right, in the end, is not always what it seems to be, and some rules are better broken.”

— Jodi Picoult

76. “If you spend too much time living in the past, you never move forward.”

— Jodi Picoult

77. “Some women are meant to change the world, while others are meant to hold it together. And then there are those of us who simply don’t want to be in it, because we know no matter how much we struggle, we can’t comfortably fit.”

— Jodi Picoult

78. “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

79. “One person’s trauma is another’s loss of innocence.”

— Jodi Picoult

80. “There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition.”

— Jodi Picoult

81. “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

82. “When you love someone you let them take care of you.”

— Jodi Picoult

83. “A world that was crowded with people could still be a very lonely place.”

— Jodi Picoult

84. “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

85. “You don’t look at another person’s plate to see if they have more than you. You look to see if they have enough.”

— Jodi Picoult

86. “History isn’t about dates and places and wars. It’s about the people who fill the spaces between them.”

— Jodi Picoult

87. “It seems to me that no matter what religion you subscribe to, acts of kindness are the stepping-stones to making the world a better place – because we become better people in it.”

— Jodi Picoult

88. “If you focus on sandbagging the beachhead, you can ignore the tsunami that’s approaching. Try it any other way and you’ll go crazy.”

— Jodi Picoult

89. “Even the most beautiful things can be toxic.”

— Jodi Picoult

90. “Shooting stars are not stars at all. They re just rocks that enter the atmosphere and catch fire under friction. What we wish on when we see one is only a trail of debris.”

— Jodi Picoult

91. “Who I am, and what I am capable of doing has always managed to surprise me.”

— Jodi Picoult

92. “Everyone has a book inside of them – but it doesn’t do any good until you pry it out.”

— Jodi Picoult

93. “Power isn’t about doing something terrible to someone who’s weaker than you, Reiner. It’s having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.”

— Jodi Picoult

94. “Something still exists as long as there’s someone around to remember it.”

— Jodi Picoult

95. “I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room-but eventually, you learn to live with it.”

— Jodi Picoult

96. “When she wanted to escape her life, she read books.”

— Jodi Picoult

97. “Don’t pay back in kind, pay back in kindness. If someone does wrong by you, do right by them.”

— Jodi Picoult

98. “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.”

— Jodi Picoult

99. “The real power of a wolf isn’t in its fearsome jaws, which can clench with fifteen hundred pounds of pressure per square inch. The real power of a wolf is having that strength, and knowing when not to use it.”

— Jodi Picoult

100. “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