Jodi Picoult Quotes

A pedestal is the most insidious prison ever devised.

My heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand's in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.

The most dangerous prisons are those with invisible bars

We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.

I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down into the dungeon, In the round-tower of my heart, And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder in the dust away!

His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed. Only at times, the curtain of the pupils lifts, quietly. An image enters in, rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles, plunges into the heart and is gone.

Once you create a self-justifying storyline, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples.

If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.

I saw the way she was looking at you, and I knew that she still loved you. More than that, I know she always will. It breaks my heart, but you know what? I'm still in love with her, and to me that means that I want nothing more than for her to be happy in life. I want that more than anything. It's all I've ever wanted for her.

Is there any other slavery and chain like that of temperament?

Love, sought as an escape from the burden of the self, turns rapidly into a captivity.

We take refuge in illness and then are trapped there.

The morning I got up to begin this book I coughed. Something was coming out of my throat: it was strangling me. I broke the thread which held it and yanked it out. I went back to bed and said: I have just spat out my heart.

I'll tell you this. Leaving that which you love breaks your heart open. But you will find a jewel inside, and this precious jewel is the opening of your heart to all that is new and all that is different, and it will be the making of you-if you allow it to be.

Just remember when you think you're free, the crack in your heart is me.

Like a bird, when his cage is opened, stays on his perch, dazzled by freedom, the postponed traveler does not see that his cage, with its bars of anxiety, it is open.

Nothing but real love--(how rare it is; has one human heart in a million ever known it?) nothing but real love can repay us for the loss of freedom--the cares and fears of poverty--the cold pity of the world that we both despise and respect.

Later, her first intense, serious love affair, yes then she'd lost something more tangible, if undefinable: her heart? her independence? her control of, definition of, self? That first true loss, the furious bafflement of it. And never again quite so assured, confident.

And so this young one, this young one whom I had so loved, I had to forsake, no matter how broken my heart, no matter how lonely my soul, no matter how bruised my intellect and spirit.

Badlands, you got to live it everyday, let the broken hearts stand as the price you've got to pay.

Whose hearts must I break? What lies must I maintain? - Through whose blood am I to wade ?

You can't," I murmured, swallowing the tears back with great effort. "You can't keep saving me, can't keep trying to. It's too late." "No," he said. His heart was in his eyes, and it was ripping mine apart. "Not for you. Never.

Better to be miserable with her than happy without her. Let our hearts break provided they break together. If the voice within us does not say this it is not the voice of Eros.

My greatest struggle is to coexist while watching the people I love choose less than life-supporting paths via drugs, alcohol, or poor lifestyle decisions. There is so much to life; my heart breaks watching someone held captive by addiction.