Top 236 Quotes & Sayings by Neal Shusterman - Page 4

I'll never understand how a man can live his life With his finger on the self-destruct button, Holding it there day after day, Blinded by an obsession to press it But lacking the conviction to do even that.

What? Were you born stupid, or did you just die that way?

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 you'd better listen, because me sounding like Bronte is one of the signs of the apocalypse-and if the end fo the world is coming, good deeds could earn you Judgment day brownie points.

...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.

With hardly any effort at all, she made me feel special. Just like all the other people she toyed with.

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?

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!

People would cheer throw confetti and then go about breaking the resolutions they had made only moments before.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm tired of eating your family's lousy, tasteless recipes," Dad said. "Tasteless recipes? My grandmother's rolling in her grave!" "It's from indigestion.

Lik the tree falling in the forest," says Ira. "Huh?" "You know, the old question - if a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, does it really make a sound?" Howie considers this. "Is it a pine forest, or oak?" "What's the difference?" "Oak is a much denser wood; it's more likely to be heard by someone on the freeway next to the forest where no one is.

Whoever invented the spork should be killed.

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.

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.

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

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.

...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?

...if more people had been organ donors, unwinding never would have happened...but people like to keep what's theirs, even after they're dead.

If you have to ask then you don't deserve an answer.

Crawley reached into the pocket of his fancy robe - a dinner jacket, I think it's called. The kind of thing Professer Plum would wear before killing Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with the candlestick.

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.

Cities are never random. No matter how chaotic they might seem, everything about them grows out of a need to solve a problem

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.

When it comes to such open-heart reflection, I'm a firm believer in the observer effect, which states that anything you try to observe is automatically changed by the mere fact that you're looking at it. The way I see it, if you try to study your emotions on a microscopic level, the best you can do is understand how it feels to hold the magnifying glass.

... always been a goal-oriented girl. it was both her strength and her weakness. She had a drive to completion that always gets things done, but it also made her inflexible, and stubborn.

What do you do with a textbook case when no one's written the textbook?

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.

You know that feeling you get when your leg falls asleep? Well, I suddenly had that feeling in my spine. Like termites were chewing through the marrow in my backbone.

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.

Respect doesn't come without a little resentment.

Teenage rebellion is for suburban schoolchildren. Get over 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.

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.

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.

Perhaps, thought Talon, there was a path in between. A way to shed their ignorance without losing their souls.

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

A pedestal is the most insidious prison ever devised.

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

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

So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?

Beautiful is dangerous.

Heaven might shine bright, but so do flames.

Leadership is about keeping toilets flushing," the Admiral once said. "Unless you're on the battlefront. Then it's about staying alive. Neither are pleasant.

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

You don't like her, do you?" "Who, me? No, I love her dearly. Evil scheming bitches are my favorite kind of people." (Risa)

Milestone! This is a momentous occasion," he tells her cheerily. "It should be witnessed by a friend." She throws him an icy gaze, and he does a verbal back pedal. "Aaaand since no friends are present, I'll have to do.

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.

Cowards hide [...] but warriors lie and wait [...] the only difference is whether you're motivated by fear or purpose.

It can be said, then, that Everlost is heaven...for the places that deserve a share of forever. Such places are few and far between...The greatest of these stood near Manhattan's southern-most tip: the two gray brothers to the green statue in the bay. The towers had found their heaven...held fast, and held forever by the memories of a mourning world, and by the dignity of the souls who got where they were going on that dark September day.

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

I smell fear, he said with a quiet intensity. But not nearly enough.

Mooooon!” said the Ogre. “Tranquility …” Then he pointed at the full moon. “Neil Armstrong walked in a sea of Tranquility.” Then he added, “It’s made of cheese. But you have to take off the plastic before you put it on a burger.” Mickey sighed. “What’s his story?” the wraith asked. “He’s chocolate,” Mikey said.