Neal Shusterman Quotes

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

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

~ 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

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

~ Neal Shusterman

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

~ 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

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

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

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

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

~ Neal Shusterman

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

~ Neal Shusterman

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

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

~ 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

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

So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?

~ 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

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

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

~ 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

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

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

~ Neal Shusterman

Elasticity is a fundamental principle of perception

~ 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

Heaven might shine bright, but so do flames.

~ Neal Shusterman

...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

Respect doesn't come without a little resentment.

~ Neal Shusterman

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

~ Neal Shusterman

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

~ Neal Shusterman

We're this big melting pot, but someone turned up the heat too high, and the stew started to burn. Gangs, crime, fights, and fear are now a regular part of our local stew.

~ Neal Shusterman

I’m evolving, is the thing; I’m a god becoming a constellation.’‘The constellations are mostly demigods,’ I point out. ‘And they didn’t get to be constellations until after they died.’He laughs at that, and says, ‘Death is a small sacrifice to become immortal.

~ Neal Shusterman

They meet in the girls' bathroom. The last time they were forced to meet in a place like this, they took separate, isolated stalls. Now they share one. They hold each other in the tight space, making no excuses for it. There's no time left in their lives for games, or for awkwardness, or for pretending they don't care about each others, and so they kiss as if they've done it forever. As if it is as crucial as the need for oxygen.

~ Neal Shusterman

His existence had always been comfortable, he had always held a clear picture of himself, his duties, and his place in a world. He saw that world as a place so full of turning gears he had no hope of comprehending how things fit together, so why even try?Now things were different, however. Now he wasn’t just looking out from inside of the clockwork. Instead, he was actually seeing the final motion of the escapement—the ticking hands of the clock itself.And it was a doomsday clock.Both his feline and human instincts told him to let it be. It was not his problem, or his place to interfere. If the living world was destined to fall, let it happen, let it pass into history once and for all. Who was he to try to save it?But on the other hand, if the living world were lost, then there would never again be great cats to furjack . . . and couldn’t it be that hearing the actual ticking of the clock gave one the responsibility to stop it?

~ Neal Shusterman

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.

~ Neal Shusterman

Once in a while our school has half days, and the teachers spend the afternoon 'in service,' which I think must be a group therapy for having to deal with us.

~ Neal Shusterman

What's going on? I'm in the back car of a roller coaster at the top of the climb, with the front rows already giving themselves over to gravity. I can hear those front riders screaming and know my own scream is only seconds away. I'm at the moment you hear the landing gear of a plane grind loudly into place, in that instant before your rational mind tells you it's just the landing gear. I'm leaping off a cliff only to discover I can fly... and then realizing there's nowhere to land. Ever. That's what's going on.

~ Neal Shusterman