Quotes By Jodi Picoult

I am an activist. I have a really big pulpit with my fiction and I love knowing that I can make people think.

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

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.

If a woman writes about family and about the connections between people and what it means to be alive in this day and time, it's called women's fiction. And if a man does it, it's nominated for a National Book Award. What - you can't have a heart and a penis? That doesn't make sense.

People are always afraid of the unknown - and banding together against the Thing That Is Different From Us is a time-honoured tradition for rallying the masses.

I'm not going to tell a person how to think, don't believe in that. What I want to do, when I write these books, is just to say don't be so sure of yourself. Let me pull the carpet out from underneath you, and let's see if you can still find the footing.

I'm always writing, even when I'm not at my desk. I write on my hands. I used to write on my kids' hands, too, but they don't let me any more. When I'm driving I sometimes write all the way up my arms.

I will say overwhelmingly what means so much more to me than the opinion of one reviewer are the letters I get from fans who tell me how a particular book has changed their life.

When I think about writers who use fiction as social commentary and to raise social awareness but who are also very popular, I think of Dickens.

I write about all the horrible things that can happen to kids as a way of keeping those things from happening to mine. Write the books, spit three times over your shoulder and you're safe.

There's that unwritten schism that literary writers get all the awards and commericals writers get all the success.

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.

For me it's more important that I outline all the facets of a controversial issue and let the reader make up his or her mind. I don't care if readers change their minds, but I would like readers to ask themselves why their opinion is what it is.

I think the 'New York Times' reviews overall tend to overlook popular fiction, whether you're a man, woman, white, black, purple or pink. I think there are a lot of readers who would like to see reviews that belong in the range of commercial fiction.

I think there are readers out there and I don't think the book is dead. And more importantly I don't think readers have to choose between literary and commercial fiction.

Writer's block is for people who have the luxury of time.

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.

I feel I'm able to get rid of any demons lurking in my psyche through my writing, which leaves me free to create all of this and to enjoy our family life, stepping away from all the fictional traumas and the dramas. If I write about family in crisis, then I won't have to live through it, I guess.

Everyone has a book inside of them - but it doesn't do any good until you pry it out.

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.