Jodi Picoult Quotes

What happened to me in Somalia doesn't define me.

My mother had a horrific life. At fourteen, she was in the Nazi concentration camps. Her sense about life now is, every day above ground is a good day.

I know people could tell incredible stories. People have been in concentration camps, or women being raped, or a man going to war and not recovering from it. People have been robbed and beaten. A lot of people have had strong events in their life, which I didn't.

We thought the hard part was over—but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life when you’re all busted up inside and out—there is nothing harder.

Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived.

Trauma is survivable, but often not much more. It kills you while allowing you to still live.

. . . your history is no less important to your survival than your ability to breathe. In the end, you can only determine whether to saturate your memories with pain or with perspective. Forgetting is not an option. I tell you the truth now: Pain was not God's plan for this life. It is a reality, but it is not a part of the plan.

In Kurdistan, there's a lot of hardship - a lot of wars, a lot of bitter and difficult lifestyles. And witnessing all those made me a director.

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.

I don't consider myself a survivor; that's someone who has gone through something terrible.

I remember people who'd had a lot of hardship during the war. They'd thought we'd won.

And when Roger talks about the frightened ones running away from the bombs, I immediately thought of my days when I was young and I had to wear these gas masks.

I think the brutality is important to convey as part of the story, to see how brutal it is to have these kids in battle with one another.

War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.

War taught me that not everything is glamorous.

It's what the Iraqi people are going through right now. They have encountered a victorious, hostile force-but, you know, there they still are. There their culture is, there their history is, they're not going anywhere.

A really strong woman accepts the war she went through and is ennobled by her scars.

I have come to believe there is nothing in the lives of human beings more terrifying than war and nothing more important than for those of us who have experienced it to share its awful truth

You rarely hear women crying in Grozney. They have cried their eyes out long ago.

There's nothing good that comes out of war. It's simply hell on earth, and people survive, and people don't.

Losing a game is not a tragedy after experiencing border raids and having to eat beetles because you are out of rations.

When you see the results, you forget the pain.

Look at an infantryman's eyes and you can tell how much war he has seen.

He who suffers, remembers.

You've been told that you're broken. That you're damaged goods ... there is also Post-Traumatic Growth. You come back from war stronger and more sure of who you are.