Jodi Picoult

Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't stand the thought of them changing? Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't see clearly?

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.

So you know what mean when I say that 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.

I may not have a degree, but I certainly got an education.

Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late that we've wounded the people we are trying to protect.

When your mother is made out of your dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.

Memories aren't stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, if you ask me, but in the spaces between any given two people.

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.

Maybe mothers - consciously or subconsciously - repelled their daughters in different ways.

Hope is what makes you look outside the window to see if it's stopped raining. Hope is what makes you believe he'll text you back. Hope is why you buy your jeans a little tight... Hope is why you get out of bed in the morning, and why you dream at night. Hope is what makes us believe that things can only get better. Hope is what keeps us going.

I don't know what he means by that, but I nod and smile at him. You'd be surprised at how far that response can get you in a conversation where you are completely confused.