Quotes from Scott Westerfeld

The big eyes and lips said: I'm young and vulnerable, I can't hurt you, and you want to protect me. And the rest said: I'm healthy, I won't make you sick. And no matter how you felt about a pretty, there was a part of you that thought: If we had kids, they'd be healthy too. I want this pretty person.…

In the upper right corner, Gamma Matsui was kicking a new tech religion. Some history clique had applied averaging software to the world's great spiritual books, then programmed it to spit out godlike decrees. For some reason, the software had told them not to eat pigs. "Who would do that in the first place?" Aya asked.

Shay's eyes flashed. "Or maybe when they do the operation—when they grind and stretch your bones to the right shape, peel off your face and rub all your skin away, and stick in plastic cheekbones so you look like everybody else—maybe after going through all that you just aren't very interesting anymore." Tally

And barking famous, these friends are

Paradigmatica Autorevolezza Extranumerica

The Rusties had more than one dream ..... After the first crude city killers were invented... they were redesigned to send people into space. Death and hope in one machine

Being in the city all the time made everything fake, in a way. Like the buildings and bridges held up by hoverstruts, or jumping off a rooftop with a bungee jacket on, nothing was quite real there.

Inattaccabile. Inoppugnabile. Perfettissima.

I read that the real Cleopatra wasn't even that great-looking. She seduced everyone with how clever she was." "Yeah, right. And you've seen a picture of her?" "They didn't have cameras back then, Squint." "Duh. So how do you know she was ugly?" "Because that's what historians wrote at the time.

She pulled away, his grip no stronger than the strands of a spider web.

It didn't matter what you looked like. It was how you carried yourself, how you saw yourself. Strength and reflexes were only part of it—Shay simply knew that she was special, and so she was. Everyone else was just wallpaper

The horizon, bloody with the sunset, dulls with smoke and churned-up dirt.

And hidden within the agony the strange clarity came again, as if the world had ordered itself into something that made perfect sense.

It must be horrible to see an ugly face when your surrounded by such beautiful people all the time . In my opinion , it does happens sometimes .

He wanted to show the world that nobody can win against him, no matter what cards they hold. Proving that he could throw me away was just as important as taking the ruins.

Yeah, well. They're more like 'Keep Out' signs, or 'Keep In,' I guess—as in keeping you guys in your place. The world goes on for a whole lot farther, trust me. This is just a trick to keep you from knowing it.

You're still yourself on the inside, Shay. But when you're pretty, people pay more attention." "Not everyone thinks that way.

it had never occurred to him before now that people could see reality in completely different ways.

He turned to face her again, his late-pretty composure crumbling. "But you're . . ." "Pretty? Think again." She smiled. "I'm Tally Youngblood. My mind is very ugly. And I'm taking your car.

By the entrance to the compound a few rabbits hopped aimlessly, too addled by their sudden freedom to make a break for it.

What was this place?" Tally asked. "I think they made newspapers here," David said. "Like books, but you threw them away and got a new one every day." "You're kidding." "Not at all. And you thought we wasted trees in the Smoke!

It didn't matter where, really. What mattered was the connection, the space formed between the two of the, a slice cut from the universe and made private and inviolable.

Maybe it's like the Youngblood cults say: Being crim can change the world.

Darcy didn't want this interruption to last only a year. She wanted to see how long she could stretch this feeling out. To be dizzy with words again, like in that glorious week at the end of last November when everything had fallen into place. Darcy wanted that feeling not just for a year. She wanted it forever.