Being a good mother, it seemed to me, meant you ran the risk of losing your child.

— Jodi Picoult

Being a mother gives you a singular sort of vision, a prism through which you can see your child with many different faces all at once. It is the reason you can watch him shatter a ceramic lamp, and still remember him as an angel.

— Jodi Picoult

Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.

— Jodi Picoult

Better safe than sorry!

— Jodi Picoult

But even if every house looked identical-if all the furnishings were the same- it still wouldn't feel like yours. That's because home isn't where you are. It's who you're with.

— Jodi Picoult

But if you seek forgiveness, doesn't that automatically mean you cannot be a monster? By definition, doesn't that desperation make you human again?

— Jodi Picoult

But it seems to me that growing up means you stop hoping for the best, and start expecting the worst. So how do you tell an adult that maybe everything wrong in the world stems from the fact that she’s stopped believing the impossible can happen?

— Jodi Picoult

But Katie knew it was a sin, had known from the moment she made the decision to lie with Adam. However, the transgression wasn't making love without the sanction of marriage. It was that for the first time in her life, Katie had put herself first. Put her own wants and needs above everything and everyone else.

— Jodi Picoult

But kids don't stay where they're supposed to. You turn around and find her not in the bedroom but hiding in a closet; you turn around and see she's not three but thirteen. 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

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