Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts Quotes

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.

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?

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.

...when they look at me, I so badly want to be who they see.

When I'm with you, bells go off in my head like a moving truck that's backing up.

I would tell them that when you look at a person, you never know what the're hiding.

It was the first time she'd discovered something she really didn't want to find, and she didn't know what to do once she'd found it.

That's the crazy thing about lies. You start to fall for them, yourself.

Sometimes knowing what's right isn't a rational decision, or even what works on paper. Sometimes leaving is the best course of action after all.

Unlike Elise, who could discover parts of a person they didn't even know were absent, you specialized in tangible, but that, I feared, was only a matter of time.

When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a piece of yourself inside her, because sometimes that is what it takes to claim.

If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me.

You can't hate someone until you know what it might be like to love them.

In half hour my mother has managed to give me what my father couldn't: my past.

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.

Sometimes I think my whole life has been about holding on to you.

Elise Vasquez and I stand shoulder to shoulder, watching the woman we both feel we lost, and may be never really had.

Neither of us, it turns out, has been the only one who lost someone she loved.

You cannot hate someone until you know what it might be like to love them.

It's not because I don't want to hurt Delia's feelings. It's because when she is bruised, I'm the one who aches.

That's the crazy things about lies, you start to believe them yourself." (pg. 342)

Do you ever go back?"Ruthann nods, "When I need to remember where I came from, or where I'm headed.

We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right." (pg. 481)