Jodi Picoult Quotes
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I think the reason these readers come back to me is because I represent their points of view. It may not be my point of view, but that's OK. Everyone still deserves to have their say.
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I woke up one morning thinking about wolves and realized that wolf packs function as families. Everyone has a role, and if you act within the parameters of your role, the whole pack succeeds, and when that falls apart, so does the pack.
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If you read the first page of one of my novels, I can guarantee that you will read the last one. This isn't just social commentary. This is also about writing good page-turners. I want people to keep reading.
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I started writing when I had three kids under the age of 4. I used to write every ten minutes I got to sit in front of a computer. Now, when I have more time, I function the same way: if it's writing time, I write.
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It's a fallacy that writers have to shut themselves up in their ivory towers to write. I have all these interruptions, three of which I gave birth to. If I was thrown for a loop every time I was distracted I could never get anything done.
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Even though I don't write about things that come from my life because I'm lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that's really what being a writer is, probably.
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It's certainly my honor to be able to, hopefully, change the world a tiny bit, one mind at a time.
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You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.
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I consider myself spiritual and I'm married to a man who is both an atheist and a humanist, and my kids have been raised with the traditions of different religions, but they do not go to church or temple. My feeling is that everyone should be able to believe what they want or need to believe.
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What if it turns out that a life isn't defined by who you belong to, or where you came from, by what you wished for or whom you've lost, but instead by the moments you spend getting from each of these places to the next?
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I don't have to live the lives of my characters to write about them. It's about really putting yourself in their shoes.
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I think many of my books, including 'Handle with Care,' including 'My Sister's Keeper,' circle back to how far are we willing to go for the people we love? I think love changes the way we think. It's the thing that takes you out of what your normal set of beliefs would be.
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If you read a book that's fiction and you get caught in the characters and the plot, and swept away, really, by the fiction of it - by the non-reality - you sometimes wind up changing your reality as well. Often, when the last page is turned, it will haunt you.
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I know that books I have written will still resonate in 50 years - particularly 'My Sister's Keeper.' It has sold three million copies in the States alone. I strongly feel that, as a novelist, you have a platform and the ability to change people's minds.
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I had absolutely no trauma in my childhood. If anyone ever assumed that my books were autobiographical, they'd be sorely disappointed, because none of these things happened to me.
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The act of writing... is the act of trying to understand why my opinion is what it is. And ultimately, I think that's the same experience the reader has when they pick up one of my books.
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I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands.
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You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.
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Gay rights is not something most of us think about - because most of us happen to have been born straight.
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Most people in America want an easy read. I call it McFiction - books which pass right through you without you even digesting them. I don't mean a book that has two-syllable words. I mean chapters you can read in a toilet break. Happy endings. We are more of a TV culture.
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Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.
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Read a ton. Take a workshop course so you learn to give and get criticism.
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I have several writer friends, but I don't involve them in my work process. I'm more likely to talk about the business of publishing with them.
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Many of my books come from what if questions that I can't answer, things that I'm worried about as either a woman, a wife, a mom, an American.