There are no guarantees about anything.

All quotes from 'My Sister's Keeper' by Jodi Picoult

"I'm telling you, if aliens landed on earth today and took a good hard look at why babies get born, they'd conclude that most people have children by accident, or because they drink too much on a certain night, or because birth control isn't one hundred percent, or for a thousand other reasons that aren't very flattering."

"When you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

"I think there are crossroads in our lives when we make grand, sweeping decisions without even realizing it. Like scanning the newspaper headline at a red light, and therefore missing the rogue van that jumps the line of traffic. Entering a coffee shop on a whim and meeting the man you will marry one day, while he's digging for change at the counter. Or this one: instructing your husband to meet you, when for hours you have been convincing yourself that it's nothing important at all."

"She is the person I ran to when I got my first period; the one who helped me knit back together my first broken heart; the hand I would reach for in the middle of the night when I could no longer remember which side our father parted his hair on, or what it sounded like when our mother laughed. No matter what she is now, before all that, she was my built-in best friend."

"Take it from me: love has all the lasting performance of a rainbow -- beautiful while it's there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink."

"A runaway train is an accident. Me, I'll jump in front of the tracks. I'll even tie myself down in front of the speeding engine. There's still some illogical part of me that still believes if you want Superman to show up, first there's got to be someone worth saving."

"Not everyone dies of old age. People get run over by cars. People crash in airplanes. People choke on peanuts. There are no guarantees about anything, least of all one's future."

"I looked at her, and for just a splinter of a minute saw the woman she used to be -- one who knew where to find her smile, instead of having to rummage for it; one who always messed up punch lines and still got a laugh; one who could reel me in without even trying."

"You can stay up all night and still not count all the ways to lose the people you love."

"The older couples, the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with their silverware, eat without the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say."

"My family is famous for lying to ourselves by omission: if we don't talk about it, then-presto! -- there's no more lawsuit, no more kidney failure, no worries at all."

"I have never understood why it is called losing a child. No parent is that careless. We all know exactly where our sons and daughters are; we just don't necessarily want them to be there."

"Summertime, I think, is a collective unconscious. We all remember the notes that made up the song of the ice cream man; we all know what it feels like to brand our thighs on a playground slide that's heated up like a knife in a fire; we all have lain on our backs with our eyes closed and our hearts beating across the surface of our lids, hoping that this day will stretch just a little longer than the last one, when in fact it's all going in the other direction."

"It doesn't take a whole long life to realize that what we deserve to have, we rarely get."

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

"A lie has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead."