Neal Shusterman Quotes - Page 2

Makes sense, the earth is quick to consume the flesh of things that ain't natural.

Live by your impulses, and you'll be just like them. You're better than that, aren't you, Red?

Respect doesn't come without a little resentment.

...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?

Neal Shusterman

Heaven might shine bright, but so do flames.

Neal Shusterman

while it’s five in the morning here, it’s also five in the evening somewhere in China—proving that incompatible truths make perfect sense when seen with global perspective.

Neal Shusterman

Elasticity is a fundamental principle of perception,

Neal Shusterman

Hope can be bruised and battered. It can be forced underground and even rendered unconscious, but hope cannot be killed.

Neal Shusterman

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.

Neal Shusterman

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.

Neal Shusterman

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

Neal Shusterman

We are, however, creatures of containment. We want all things in life packed into boxes that we can label. But just because we have the ability to label it, doesn't mean we really know what's in the box.It's kind of religion. It gives us comfort to believe we have defined something that is, by its very nature, indefinable. As to whether or not we've gotten it right, well, it's all a matter of faith.

Neal Shusterman

...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.

Neal Shusterman

I'm going out to find her, to make things right, or atleast properly wrong.

Neal Shusterman

So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?

Neal Shusterman

She was deemed an unfit mother, in spite of the fact that she goes to the gym every day,' Hal once told me. . . .Beautiful people are often forgiven for many things--and maybe she's gotten through life that way, but I don't forgive her for anything--and I don't even know what awful things she's done other than showing a lack of parental fitness.

Neal Shusterman

Don't you recognize me, Mary? It's your good friend Allie the Outcast - although it looks like you're the one who's the out-cast now." Then Allie realized something with far too much glee. "Now that you're here - alive and all - there's something I've wanted to do for a very long time."Then Allie reached back, curled her fleshie's right hand into a fist, and swung it toward Mary with all her might.This was one strong fleshie!The punch connected with Mary's eye so hard, that Mary's entire body spun around, and she collapsed into a leopard chair. Allie's knuckles hurt, but it was a good kind of pain."My eye!" wailed Mary. "Oh! My eye.

Neal Shusterman

The good Lord wouldn't have put it in your heart if it wasn't right.

Neal Shusterman

I wrote Unwind for lots of reasons, and it poses questions about alot of subjects. To state it briefly, I wanted to point out how when peopletake intractable positions on an issue, and stick to extreme sides,sometimes the result is a compromise that is worse than either extreme. Imeant it as a wake up call to society -- and to point out that sometimes theproblem IS that we take sides on an issue, when a different sort of approachis needed. It's also to pose questions about what it means to be alive.Where does life begin, where does it end -- and point out that there is nosingle answer to these questions. The problem is people who think there aresimple answers. People who see things as simple black-and-whiteright-and-wrong are the type of people who will end up with a world like theworld in Unwind.

Neal Shusterman

It made my blood boil so hot, my brain stopped working right.

Neal Shusterman

Hole..." He grips Risa's hand tighter. "Hole, Risa, hole..." And she smiles "Yes, Connor," she says. "You're whole. You're finally whole.

Neal Shusterman

Griping is for those without a plan of action...

Neal Shusterman

They will find whatever button will make you dance, and dance you will, no matter how hideous the tune.

Neal Shusterman

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.

Neal Shusterman

I almost told her everything right then. I wanted to tell her about the Wolves, and how I was supposed to hate them, but when you spend your days with evil, some of it is bound to soak into your clothes, like cigar smoke in a closed room.

Neal Shusterman

You see, Risa, survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences. When the need is great enough, and the music loud enough, we can stomp conscience into the ground.'Risa closes her eyes. She knows the dance...'It's the way of the world,' Divan continues. 'Look at unwinding, society's grand gavotte of denial. There will, no doubt, come a time when people look to one another and say, 'My God, what have we done?' But I don't believe it will happen any time soon. Until then, the dance must have music; the chorus must have its voice. Give it that voice, Risa. Play for me.'But Risa's fingers offer him nothing, and the Orgao Organico holds the obdurate, unyielding silence of the grave.

Neal Shusterman

It's always the lesser of two evils.''I don't see why there have to be any evils at all.'-Connor

Neal Shusterman

Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.

Neal Shusterman

Sometimes, Lev, I just want to smack you.""You already hit him with a car.

Neal Shusterman

Wars have a way reinventing people. And making too many things disappear.-Sonia

Neal Shusterman

How many kids are in the Graveyard?""A bunch.""Who sends your supplies?""George Washington. Or is it Abraham Lincoln? I forget.""How often do you receive new arrivals?""About as often as you beat your wife.

Neal Shusterman

Please give me a single reason why I shouldn't hurl myself beneath the wheels of that bus.

Neal Shusterman

Luck, however, is too dumb to remain consistent

Neal Shusterman

Do we exist because others perceive our existence, or is, indeed, our own affirmation enough?

Neal Shusterman

I can't help what I have any more than you can help what you don't

Neal Shusterman

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

Neal Shusterman

There are worse things than being robbed..." I could smell the sick old-meat stench on his breath, like he really had eaten my grandmother. "...worse things than dyin' even. You be a good boy, Little Red, and maybe you'll get to live awhile. Maybe you'll get to die in your own natural time.

Neal Shusterman

Today he failed to change the world. As for tomorrow, who can tell?

Neal Shusterman

I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.

Neal Shusterman

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.

Neal Shusterman

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

Neal Shusterman

On my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize that the expression spoiled rotten meant exactly that. We kids were the apples of our parents' eyes, and I, for one, was rotting from inside out.

Neal Shusterman

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.

Neal Shusterman

Suddenly, Tara's accomplishment was clear. She had lined up allies among the school's various groups and got them all to work together for probably the first time in the school's history. She was like a master builder who could bend materials like stone and steel and clay to her will... except her materials were flesh and spirit.

Neal Shusterman

I came running down the stairs that morning, like it was Christmas. My parents were already up. In my family, presents never waited; they were there upon waking. Our family has a problem with what they called delayed gratification. We want what we want when we want it, and we always want it now.

Neal Shusterman

And I think, if thoughts are worth a penny, how much less promises must be worth. Especially the ones you're likely to break.

Neal Shusterman

But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not all of them lead to hell.

Neal Shusterman

Dreams can twist your emotions like no reality can.

Neal Shusterman

You can't imagine what it's like to be torn between darkness and light- to be a traitor no matter what move you make. If my grandmother and Marissa died tonight, it would be because I had stayed in the darkness too long, flirting with the idea of being Cedric's consigliere. If that happened, I could never live with myself- but if Cedric gave me the bite as he planned, I would be forced to live with it forever. That was the worst hell I could imagine.

Neal Shusterman

When he touches a wall the ooze grows thicker, drawn to his and as if he's become a gravity well for the darkness - and it occurs to me that the dark must be in love with the light. Yet one must always kill the other.

Neal Shusterman

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

Neal Shusterman

Sometimes the darkness beyond is not glorious at all, it truly is an absolute absence of light. A clawing, needy tar that pulls you down. You drown but you don't. It turns you to lead so you sink faster in its viscous embrace. It robs you of hope and even the memory of hope. It makes you think you've always felt like this, and there's no place to go but down, where it slowly, ravenously digests your will, distilling it into the ebony crude of nightmares. And you know the darkness beyond despair, just as intimately as you know the soaring heights. Because in this and all universes, there is balance. You can't have the one without facing the other. And sometimes you think you can take it because the joy is worth the despair, and sometimes you know you can't take it and how did you ever think you could? And there is the dance; strength and weakness, confidence and desolation.

Neal Shusterman

Which side was I on? There was no time to search for answers. All I could do now was ride on a werewolf's back, toward a destiny as hidden as the dark side of the moon.

Neal Shusterman

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?

Neal Shusterman

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

Neal Shusterman

The accountant lingers at his children's doorway a moment more, listening to the easy rhythm of their breathing, and something cold moves through him, like the passage of a ghost - but he know that's not it. It's more like the portent of a future. A future that must never come to pass......and for the first time, he gives rise to a thought that is silently echoed in millions of homes that night. My God... what have we done?

Neal Shusterman

And so, as the mob backs away to give them space... as the riot police holster their weapons, standing down, and as Risa takes the podium, calming the crowd with a voice as soothing as a sonata, Connor Lassiter holds his family like he'll never let them go.

Neal Shusterman

...Our conversation with the supermarket manager had been about as helpful as a New Jersey road sign, and if you've ever been there, you know the signs don't tell you the exit you're coming up to, they only point out the exits you've just missed. It puts parents in very foul moods--and since you're probably there to visit relatives, their mood was pretty touch and go to begin with.

Neal Shusterman

I always hear people talk about 'dysfunctional families.' It annoys me, because it makes you think that somewhere there's this magical family where everyone gets along, and no one ever screams things they don't mean, and there's never a time when sharp objects should be hidden. Well, I'm sorry, but that family doesn't exist. And if you find some neighbors that seem to be the grinning model of 'function,' trust me - that's the family that will get arrested for smuggling arms in their SUV between soccer games.The best you can really hope for is a family where everyone's problems, big and small, work together. Kind of like an orchestra where every instrument is out of tune, in exactly the same way, so you don't really notice.

Neal Shusterman

Your friend Mikey knew what my touch could do, but he didn’t tell me. He turned me into a murderer. Worse than a murderer.”“I think,” said Nick, “they call that manslaughter or wrongful death, don’t they? I mean, when it’s an accident or out of ignorance, or something.”Clarence turned to Nick, studying him with his Everlost eye. “You’re a lot smarter than you were back in the cage,” Clarence said. “You look better too. Back then you were a thing, now you’re almost a person.”“Thanks . . . but ‘almost’ is still ‘almost.’”“Yeah, well, we’re all almost something.

Neal Shusterman

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