Jodi Picoult Quotes

People who lose children have their hearts warped into weird shapes. Some try to deny it has happened. Some pretend it hasn't. Losing friends or parents is not the same. To lose a child is beyond comprehension. It defies biology. It contradicts the natural order of history and genealogy. It derails common sense. It violates time. It creates a huge, black, bottomless hole that swallows all hope.

I was fascinated by the lack of a word for a parent who has lost a child. We have no word in English. I thought for sure there'd be a word in Irish but there is none. And then I looked in several other languages and could not find one, until I found the word Sh'khol in Hebrew. I'm still not sure why so many languages don't have a word for this sort of bereavement, this shadowing.

Having a daughter and a grandson, I certainly could relate to the fact that this child, who you simply dote on, being taken away from you at an early age, and every single kind of emotion you would have to go through.

I think losing a child is unimaginable. It's every person's worst nightmare. It's unimaginably difficult. It shakes your faith in the world. It tests your optimism.

I think if my child died I would prefer it if I were dead.

It's a difficult thing to lose a child, a grown-up child.

I just can't think how I would go on without children having lost Edith already... It's too upsetting for me to write about them. Naturally, I still hope, and wait, wait, wait.

Losing a parent is a hard thing... I often sit here and think it would be great if mum and dad were alive and had a chance to see their grandkids grow up.

Being told to cut off and walk away from a child - I cannot imagine it. I think I'd rather die.

I had a daughter and lost her a long while ago. That's too sad a story to go into.

And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn’t bear it. I honestly thought I couldn’t bear it.

The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire.

Because I’ve lost my children, too, and I know the ache that lives inside the heart that no amount of solace or alcohol will squelch. I know what it’s like to have the powers of a god and to not be able to hold the one thing that means the most to me. And if you think for one minute that I would ever serve that to another being, even Artemis, who I’d like to torture for eternity, then go ahead and call down your army on me. I would deserve whatever death they give. (Sin)

If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husband's family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We nurse them when they are sick. . . But no woman should live longer than her children. It is against the law of nature. If she does, why wouldn't she wish to leap from a cliff, hang from a branch, or swallow lye?

Happy is it to place a daughter; yet it pains a father's heart when he delivers to another's house a child, the object of his tender care.

I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.

I'm sure there's just such a desperate feeling if you've lost a child. You'd probably feel so desperate that you would do anything. Even if they came to the door and put a gun to your head, you'd just be happy to see them.

A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had. But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.

If the Richter scale could measure human calamities, the loss of a child would register a ten.

Spouses have each other, and even when one eventually dies, they have memories of a time when they existed before that other person and can more readily imagine a life without them. Likewise, parents may have other children to be concerned with--a future to protect for them. To lose a sibling is to lose the one person with whom one shares a lifelong bond that is meant to continue on into the future.

Losing a son, losing a daughter, a brother, a sister, losing a close friend - it can go beyond grief to isolation and feeling despair.

The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty look, repeats his words, Remembers me of his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form

I have daughters and I have sons./When one of them lays a hand/On my shoulder, shining fish/Turn suddenly in the deep sea.

I shed more tears than God could ever have required.