Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

"You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across?"

"You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not."

"When I was little I bragged about my firefighting father: my father would go to heaven, because if he went to hell he would put out all the fires"

"I wondered what happened when you offered yourself to someone, and they opened you, only to discover you were not the gift they expected and they had to smile and nod and say thank you all the same."

"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."

"Dylan Jerome,"the lawyer admits, "wanted to sue God for not caring enough about him."

"See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it. And the very act of living is a tide: at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded."

"if you tell yourself you feel fine, you will."

"If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?"

"well, sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least."

"See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it"

"The bottom line is that we never fall for the person we're supposed to."

"Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it."

"You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across?"

"He smiles at me, and I am suddenly seventeen again - the year I realize that love doesn't follow the rules, the year I understood that nothing is worth having so much as something unattainable"

"I'm lonely. Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has it's own zip code. Plus, I get certifiably crazy when I've got PMS. You don't love someone because they're perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they're not."

"Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines."

"See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it. And the very act of living is a tide: at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded."