Jodi Picoult Quotes

Instead of playing heroes and righteous people, I'd rather portray characters with problems of conscience who have to lie, to betray, and then have to cope with that. They feel more true to me.

Shall I pass by and leave you lying there because of the expedition you led against Greece, or shall I set you up again because of your magnanimity and your virtues in other respects?

I did what I felt that I wanted to do. Fairly selfishly. I didn't know my kids as well as I should have.

I'm really interested in the difference between selfishness and generosity. It confuses me to no end because sometimes it all just feels like pure indulgence on my part.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

The trouble when you're doing something illegal is that you know what you're doing. You're lying to your parents, you're lying to your kids. The only person you can't lie to is yourself.

How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?

I can't help it. I want to be a good Catholic, but I'm a hedonist.

As a working mother, wife, daughter, and daughter-in-law, I have to make constant moral choices. Every choice I make results in someone else suffering.

Ten commandments yet seven deadly sins: conflict?

To be honest, I'm selfish as an artist. I'm doing what I want to do and what I want to hear.

Many people weigh the guilt, they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.

And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself. And you will have only yourself.

Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate, Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving.

Satan had two conditions [to his plan]: the first was the denial of agency, and the second, that he would have the honor. In other words, something had to be in it for him. And thus he became the father of lies and selfishness. Taking up one's cross and following the Savior means overcoming selfishness; it is a commitment to serve others. Selfishness is one of the baser human traits, which must be subdued and overcome. We torture our souls when we focus on getting rather than giving.

A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn't have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.

Would I sacrifice a friendship to take a step forward in my political career? Thus far in my political career, I have been spared from having to make such a decision, thank God. And I can't imagine what it must be like.

I am a sinner....who's probably gonna sin again...Lord forgive me!

Inside Laila too a battle was being waged : guilt on one side, partnered with shame, and, on the other, the conviction that what she and Tariq had done was not sinful; that it had been natural, good, beautiful, even inevitable, spurred by the knowledge that they might never see each other again.

Blushing, palpitations, a bad conscience--this is what you get if you haven't sinned.

I'd stand in line for Confession with old people and little kids, and as the line moved up and it was getting closer to my turn, I knew that when I got into the box I would lie! Again!

It's a difficult position. Do you endanger your child to fight for the right thing, or do you keep your mouth shut and let your child grow up in a world where their natural rights are stripped away from them?

There is a great deal of sin that comes from homosexuals who believe their homosexuality is a sin.

you could have forgiven my committing a sin if you hadn't feared that I had a committed a pleasure as well.

I enjoyed the innocence of unhappiness and of helplessness; could I blame myself for a sin which attracted me, which flooded me with pleasure precisely to the extent it brought me to despair?