Neal Shusterman Quotations | Page 2

We can lie to ourselves, saying we believe one thing, and sometimes we convince other's it's true, with the hope that by convincing others, we can convince ourselves. Wars are often waged not because of what we believe, but because of the things we want others to believe.

Monster only had the power that you gave them

There are mysteries in Everlost. Some of them are wonderful, and others scary. They should all be explored, though- perhaps that's why we're here: to experience the good and the bad that Everlost has to offer.

It was at that moment he realized that his spirit was truly human once more. For he no longer remembered how to be alone without being lonely.

And," added Mikey. "she's my sister." The others looked at him for a moment, and broke out laughing. "Yeah, yeah," Squirrel scoffed, "and the McGill is my cousin." Now Allie burst out laughing, which made Mikey more annoyed. "If the McGill was your cousin," Mikey said, "I can guarantee he'd disown you.

How much do you know about the Heartland War?' Connor shrugs. 'It was the last chapter in our history textbook, but we had state testing, so we never got to it.

It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No--the soul of a man.

She smiles at them as they go by and continues to play, making it clear that this furnace of a place, full of planes that cannot fly, is more than it seems. It is a womb of redemption for every Unwind, and fora ll those who fought the Heartland War and lost - which was everybody.

The good thing about being explosive is that no one can beat you.

I was asking if unwinding kills you, or if it leaves you alive somehow. C'mon—it's not like we haven't thought about it." (...) What do you think, Connor?" asks Hayden. "What hap­pens to your soul when you get unwound?" Who says I even got one?" For the sake of argument, let's say you do." Who says I want an argument?

Roland glares at Connor and Connor glares back. Then he says what he always says at moments like this. "Nice socks." Although Roland doesn't look down right away, it derails him just enough for him to back off. He doesn't check to see if his socks match until he thinks Connor isn't looking. And the moment he does, Connor snickers. Small victories are bet­ter than none.

I gotta go to the bathroom," Emby mumbles. "You should have thought of that before you left," says Hayden, putting on his best mother voice. "How many times do we have to tell you? Always use the potty before climbing into a shipping crate.

What he's really saying is: Please be a human being. With a life so full of rules and regiments, it's so easy to forget that's what they are. She knows—she sees—how often compassion takes a back seat to expediency.

In a perfect world everything would be either black or white, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is.

You may feel a tugging sensation near your ankles.

So much of my life had been under tight control. So much of Quinn's life had been wild insanity. What we needed now was both: a directed burst of controlled insanity.

You can't change laws without first changing human nature.' -Nurse Greta You can't change human nature without first changing the law.' -Nurse Yvonne

Statistically speaking, there's a better chance that some part of me will go on to greatness somewhere in the world. I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.

They were the screams of riders torn apart by the twisted reflections of their own inner selves.

...One thing you learn when you've lived as long as I have-people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light.

Conner Lassiter. Scheduled to be unwound the 21st of November-until you went AWOL. You caused an accident that killed a bus driver, left dozens of others injured, and shut down an interstate highway for hours. Then, on top of it, you took a hostage AND shot a Juvey-cop with his own tranq gun." ..."He's the Akron AWOL?!

It comes with being sixteen," Mom said. "You teenagers, you go into a cocoon when you turn fifteen and don't come out for years." "So they become butterflies when they finally come out?" my little sister Christina asked. "No," Mom said. "They're still caterpillars, only now they're big fat caterpillars that smell.

In this world, there is a fine line between enlightenment and brain damage.

Whoever invented the spork should be killed.

The way I see it, the impossible happens all the time; but we're so good at taking it for granted, we forget it was once impossible.

You can't change laws without first changing human nature.

It's funny how a flame can only burn your hand if you move too slow, you can tease it all you want and it never gets you, if your quick enough.

This book is so interesting. I always wonder what's going to happen next.

Fight, flight, and screw up royaly.

Sometimes we make our alliances not by the shape and color of our flesh but by the convictions of our heart.

You never realize the holes a person leaves behind until you fall into them.

...And perhaps you can sense, in some small twisting loop of your gut, the convergence of the wrong, of the right, and of the woefully misguided. If you do, then pay sharp attention to the moment you wake, and the moment you fall asleep...For maybe then you will know, without a shadow of a doubt, which is which.

Normally Connor would walk away from a conversation like this. His life is about tangibles: things you can see, hear and touch. God, souls, and all that has always been like a secret in a black box he couldn't see into, so it was easier just to leave it alone. Only now, he's inside the black box.

Love, Allie concluded, wasn't blind, it simply saw alternate dimensions.

Getting to know someone in blind darkness changes your impression of them.

It's called loitering, which is like littering with human beings as the trash.

...the Statue of Liberty's got this invitation: 'Give me your tired, your poor, your reeking homeless--' 'Huddled masses,' said Ira. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' ... Okay, fine. So like everybody in the old countries says, 'Hey, I'm a huddled mass,' and they all wanna come over.

Don’t I have a choice in this?” But when she looks behind her, the answer is clear. There are two guards waiting to make sure that she has no choice at all. And as they lead her away, she thinks of Mr. Durkin. With a bitter laugh, Risa realizes that he may get his wish after all. Someday he may see her hands playing in Carnegie Hall. Unfortunately, the rest of Risa won’t be there.

I believe that we have free will. I believe we get the chance to make choices in our lives. Not everything is set in stone from the moment we're born. We choose our destiny, our ultimate fate. But I also think that we don't realize the choices we've made until after we make them. We're racing down a freeway, only to realize we've missed all the exits, and the only direction we can go is dead ahead.

Most people have two emergency modes. Fight and Flight. But Conner always knew he had three. Fight, Flight, and Screw Up Royally.

Wars are often waged not because of what we believe, but because of the things we want others to believe.

Fine," Connor tells him. "Think about stuff until your head explodes. But the only thing I want to think about is surviving to eighteen." I find your shallowness both refreshing and disappointing at the same time. Do you think that means I need therapy?

Then Jix locked eyes with him and said very calmly, "If you hit her, I will open my mouth wide enough to swallow you whole, force you through my bowels, then out my other end." Avalon scowled at him. "You can't do that." "Try me," Jix said. Avalon backed off, then angrily stormed away, and Jix winked at Jill. "One in five.

One cannot let the events of one's past murder one's future.

Do you know that if you take the books in an average school library and stretched out all those words into a single line, the line would go all the way around the world? Actually, I made that up, but doesn't it sound like it should be true?

We move in and out of darkness and light all our lives. Right now I'm pleased to be in the light.

You are so obtuse!" Brontë says, exasperated. I am calm in my response. "Do you mean stupid, or angular? You need to be more specific with your insults.

They say you never know who's the real hero and who's the real coward until you're looking death in the face. I've always been afraid of plenty of things, but fear isn't what makes you a coward. It's how depraved your heart becomes when fear gets pumped through it.

You don’t just go to somebody and say, ‘I’m a better person because you’re in my head.

Because if their own parents didn't care enough about them to keep them, who would want them in Heaven?

Beautiful is dangerous.

As your older brother, it's my sacred duty to save you from yourself." She brings her fists down on the table, making all the dinner plates jump. "The ONLY reason you're fifteen minutes older than me is because you cut in front of the line, as usual!

Can I believe in that God too?

How can you pass laws about things that nobody knows?" "They do it all the time," says Hayden. "That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.

The moment you're loved, that's when you got your soul.

But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is. -Connor

Who says I'm insane?" "Oh you're sane alright. You're so sane, you scare me. You're so sane, it's insane.

You should never apologize for existing, Lev. Not even to all those people out there who wish you didn't.

Adulthood can do the most horrific things to the best of people.

Good in Crisis; Sucks at Normal.’ That about sums up my whole life, doesn’t it?

I know this is your hand now,' she tells him. "Roland would have never touched me like that." Connor smiles, and Risa takes a moment to look down at the shark on his wrist. It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No- the soul of a man.

Death doesn't just make all the world kin, it makes all religions one

This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds.

Lev smiles. "Leave it to you to turn someone else's screwup into gold

Hayden shouts, "To the new Teen Uprising!

We want what you no longer want.

I have no idea,' he tells her, and there is such a spark in his eye when he says it, she can tell having no idea is exactly the way he wants it.

Anger is only our friend when we know its caliber and how to aim it.

Lord, if what I'm doing is wrong, then by all means strike me down. Otherwise set me free.

There's a quickening of her heart when she sees him. She tells herself it's anger.

You have robbed me, and everyone here, of their purpose. That's not salvation, that's damnation.

He only wishes there were something that would heal the scars in his mind, which he can still feel. He sees his mind now as an archipelago of islands that he labors to build bridges between - and while he's had great success engineering the most spectacular of bridges, he suspects there are some islands that he'll never reach.

Teenage rebellion is for suburban schoolchildren. Get over it.

All this time, Lev ever realized what he needed. He did not need to be adored or pitied. He needed to be forgiven. Not by God, who is all forgiving. Not by people like Marcus and Pastor Dan, who would always stand by his side. He needed to be forgiven by an unforgiving world.

That's wisdom you can take to the grave, and dig up when you need it!

Eventually your body will learn the alliances it has to make with itself,' Kenny had said - as if Cam was a factory full of strike-prone workers, or worse, a clutch of slaves forced into unwanted labor.

Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are.

The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.

The eternally sleeping princess, thinks Cam. But I shall free you from those poisoned brambles that surround your heart. And then you will have no choice but to love me.

It's a big question. Where do you begin to change the world?

The Admiral's using us," he says to the kids around him. "Don't you see that?" Most of the kids just shrug, but Hayden's there, and he never misses an opportunity to add his peculiar wisdom to a situation. "I'd rather be used whole than in pieces," Hayden says.

History is written by the victors--and when there is no victors, it all winds up in the corporate shredders.

The sad truth about humanity...is that people believe what they're told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.

think of it this way," he said "It took nine months to get you born, so doesn't it figure it would take nine months to get you dead?

The Bill of Life was signed, the Unwind Accord went into effect, and the war was over. Everyone was so happy to end the war, no one cared about the consequences

It does, Tennyson, because there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. There’s a fine line between being assertive and being a bully. And you’re on the wrong side of both lines.

Walls don't fall without effort.

The thing was, if I had found a way to escape- even for just a little while- I knew the pain would be there waiting for me when I got back.

I can't destroy things so beautiful." "Time will destroy them if you don't. Time destroys everything. But if you destroy them, it will mean something.

...You know something, don't you?" "I know lots of things--your inquiry needs to be more specific." "Just answer the question." "True/false or multiple choice?

Incredible. It never ceases to amaze Starkey how far society will go to protect the children it loves and to discard the ones it doesn’t.

We'll never be ready. So I guess that means we're as ready as we'll ever be.

The nation was tearing itself apart over pro-life and pro-choice but completely ignored the problems of the kids who were already here. I mean, no schools, no work, no clue if they'd even have a future. They just went nuts!

How do you judge the brightness of a light when you’re the source? A spotlight can never see the shadows it casts.

No," says Ariana. "It was a dream. Reality got in the way, that's all.

(Why did they call them sneakers if it was so hard to sneak in them?)

That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.

Why are you still with me, Fry?" CyFi asks after one of his body-shaking seizures. "Any sane dude woulda taken off days ago. "Who says I'm sane?" "Oh, you're sane, Fry. You're so sane, you scare me. You're so sane, it's insane.

Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.

does a sick society get so used to its illness that it can't remember being well? what if the memory is too dangerous for the people who like things the way they are?