Could something that looked so wrong on the outside turn out to be undeniably right? My.
Once, when her brothers had been fighting over who got more spaghetti for dinner, her mother had said, You don’t look at another person’s plate to see if they have more than you. You look to see if they have enough.
We may not see eye to eye, but we can respect each other’s opinions and find the truth in them. Perhaps in those honest conversations, instead of demonizing each other, we might see each other as imperfect humans, doing our best. – Jodi Picoult, March 2018.
What people said they would do and what people actually did were two very different things. Juliet.
There’s a foot of space and world of contrast between Cristina and me yet I too know how hard it is to peel back the veneer of your life and to peek at the real. It’s like waking up in a room and getting out of bed and realizing the furniture has been completely rearranged. You will eventually find your way out but it will be slow going and you’re bound to get some bruises along the way.
But passive racism? It’s noticing there’s only one person of color in your office and not asking your boss why. It’s reading your kid’s fourth-grade curriculum and seeing that the only black history covered is slavery, and not questioning why.
If you take away anything from this novel, I hope it is an awareness of the cognitive and emotional intelligence of these beautiful animals – and the understanding that it is up to all of us to protect them.
I wondered how two boys – like Shay and me – could begin at the same point and somehow take turns that would lead us to be such a different men.
You can feel people staring; it’s like heat that rises from the pavement during summer, like a poker in the small of your back. You don’t have to hear a whisper, either, to know that it’s about you. I.
I just know that, at that moment, I remember feeling like the world had turned itself inside out. It’s the child who’s supposed to cry, and the mom who makes it all better, not the other way around, which is why mothers will move heaven and earth to hold it together in front of their own kids.
There’s this weird part about having kids – you know when your family is finished, and when it’s not.
It turns out that I learned something from my dear old dad after all: firemen are experts at getting into places they shouldn’t be.
You learn how they live their lives, and you speak their language well enough to blend in with them. But how many white people you know who go out of their way to see Tyler Perry movies so they can learn how to act around Black people?
She believes in me, and if someone believes in you wholeheartedly, you start to believe in yourself as well.
Maria kijkt me aan. “Ik weet niet wat deze persoon jou heeft aangedaan, en misschien wil ik het ook liever niet weten. Maar iemand vergeven doe je niet voor die ander. Je doet het voor jezelf, zodat je verder kunt met je leven. Het betekent: jij bent niet zo belangrijk voor mij dat je me in je greep kunt houden. Het betekent: jij zult mij niet verstrikken in het verleden. Ik verdien een toekomst.
My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. “Yes,” she said. “But see how much of me is left?
Are we born who we are, or do we make ourselves that way?
When you say you can’t do something because your religion forbids it, that’s a good thing. When you say I can’t do something because your religion forbids it, that’s a problem.
Maybe who we were in the past informed who we chose to be in the future.
I woke up with an unfamiliar taste in my mouth, part sweet part sour, it took me days to realize this was simply hope.