Jodi Picoult - Nineteen Minutes (2007)

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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
You don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?

Jodi Picoult
When you begin a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves: one for your enemy, and one for yourself.

Jodi Picoult
Do you know how there are moments when the world moves so slowly you can feel your bones shifting, your mind tumbling? When you think that no matter what happens to you for the rest of your life, you will remember every last detail of that one minute forever?

Jodi Picoult
She wondered if this was true of every parent: if, prior to having children, they all used to be someone else.

Jodi Picoult
As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter's behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.

Jodi Picoult
She suddenly remembered studying the brain in science class- how a steel rod pierced a man's skull, and he opened his mouth to speak Portuguese, a language he'd never studied. Maybe it would be like this, now, for Josie. Maybe her native tongue, from here on in, would be a string of lies.

Jodi Picoult
If we don't change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going.

Jodi Picoult
When you look into your baby's eyes, Lacy said softly, you see everything you hope they can be…not everything you wish they won't become.

Jodi Picoult
Or. I hate that word. It's two letters long and stuffed to the gills with reasonable doubt.

Jodi Picoult
There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition.

Jodi Picoult
But then again, maybe bad things happen because it's the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like.

Jodi Picoult
Something still exists as long as there's someone around to remember it.

Jodi Picoult
Eskimos maybe? believed stars were holes in the sky where people who died could peek through at you

Jodi Picoult
Imagine a world that seemed so much bigger than you. Imagine waking up one morning and finding a piece of yourself you didn't even know existed.

Jodi Picoult
Life was what happened when all the what-if's didn't, when what you dreamed or hoped or – in this case – feared might come to pass passed by instead.

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
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
The right idea is the one you can't stop thinking about; the one that's in your head first thing in the morning.

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
When feeling came back, in a storm of color and force and sensation, the most you could do was hold on to the person beside you and hope you could weather it. Alex closed her eyes and expected the worst-but it wasn't a bad thing; it was just a different thing. A messier one, more complicated one. She hesitated, and then she kissed Patrick back, willing to concede that you might have to lose control before you could find what you'd been missing.

Jodi Picoult
Isn't it amazing how, when you strip away everything, people are so much alike?

Jodi Picoult
The problem isn't with rock lyrics, it's with the fabric of this society itself.

Jodi Picoult
They ask, how could this happen here? Well. How could it not happen here?

Jodi Picoult
He knew that there was a difference between something that makes you happy and something that doesn't make you unhappy. The trick was convincing yourself these were one and the same.

Jodi Picoult
She stared at Peter, and she realized that in that one moment, when she hadn't been thinking, she knew exactly what he'd felt as he moved through the school with his backpack and his guns. Every kid in this school played a role: jock, brain, beauty, freak. All Peter had done was what they all secretly dreamed of: be someone, even for just nineteen minutes, who nobody else was allowed to judge.

Jodi Picoult
But will you miss me? More importantly - will I miss you? Does either one of us really want to hear the answer to that question?

Jodi Picoult
You can't undo something that's happened; you can't take back a word that's already been said out loud.

Jodi Picoult
Whether or not you believe in Fate comes down to one thing: who do you blame when something goes wrong.

Jodi Picoult
Once the world was pulled out from beneath your feet, did you ever get to stand on firm ground again?

Jodi Picoult