"We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far eas...
Children are supposed to go to school, play on swing sets, skin their knees.
~ Jodi Picoult ~
Photo by Ákos Szabó
Photo by Ian Turnell
Children are supposed to go to school, play on swing sets, skin their knees.
More Jodi Picoult quotes
"It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A chil...
"[I] don't think I was trying to kill myself. I just wanted to hurt, and understand exactly whay I was hurting. This made sense: you cut, you felt pain...
"I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-n...
"Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they don't want their kids... but when you look more closely, you realize that they're doing those...
"Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deed...
"I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.
"Logically, I understand that it wasn't Edward's fault my family fell apart after he left. But when you're eleven years old, you don't give a flip abou...
"I used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyw...
"It was easier for girls. They could say This hurts, or I don’t like how this feels, and have the complaint be socially acceptable. Boys, though, didn’...
"And that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are...
"Babies don't come with instruction booklets. You'd learn the same way we all do -- you'd read up on dinosaurs, you'd Google backhoes and skidders. And...
"Even if we have grown so far apart that we don't recognize each other when we pass, we have this life, this block of time, and what do you think about...
"Sometimes parents don't find what they're looking for it their child, so they plant seeds for what they'd like to grow there instead. I've witnessed t...
"What is a parent, really, but somebody who picks up the things a child leaves behind - a trail made of stripped off clothing, orphaned shoes, tiny bri...