Quotes from Scott Westerfeld

Lurking behind every chance to be made whole by fame is the axman of further dismemberment. —Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown

she wasn't so much a writer as a thief.

Maybe the trick was not to panic. In life, as in the bewildering business of writing stories and flinging them out into the world, you had to focus on the page in front of you.

Yes, it's a bit like learning French. When you open your mouth, you risk sounding like an idiot. But if you don't take that chance, you'll never speak at all.

what you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful

You don't need some whitefella's permission to adapt your own culture." "But what if it's not mine?" Darcy stared at her plate. "I eat meat. I don't pray. It feels weird, erasing a god and using him as a mortal.

Even then, her mind had started to change, realizing that nature didn't need an operation to make it beautiful, it just was.

But doesn't real love work the other way round?" Kiralee asked. "You start by thinking someone's fabulous, and by the end of the piece you realize he's a monster!

The features that we take from our parents are the things that make us different. A big nose, thin lips, high forehead—all the things that the operation takes away.

Instead, she rose a little onto her toes and they kissed again.

The wisdom of the crowd, Aya. If a million people look at a puzzle, chances are that one of them knows the answer. Or maybe ten people each know one piece, and that's enough to put it all together.

You have to prove to New York that you really want to live here.

Whatever Hiro said about fame protecting her, it felt safer next to Frizz than under the eyes of a million people.

If any of us die tonight, it won't be from cold or suffocation—it'll be from hitting the ground too fast. Have I mentioned we aren't wearing parachutes?

I've always wanted to meet Tally Youngblood in the flesh.

Your first novel is like your first relationship. You won't really understand the decisions you make until years later." She laughed. "And you'll probably screw up the ending.

For me, writing's the only thing that's always real. I've never regretted a day I wrote a good scene, whatever else I screwed up that day. That's what's fucking real.

They couldn't see how maddening death really was, how colossally pointless in every way.

Predators and prey and ruin—it's amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.

But doesn't real love work the other way round?"...... "You start by thinking someone's fabulous, and by the end of the piece you realize he's a monster!

Still, she wouldn't have traded anything for this moment, standing there and looking down at the plains spread out below. Tally had spent the last four years staring at the skyline of New Pretty Town, thinking it was the most beautiful sight in the world, but she didn't think so anymore. •

life is problematic, so novels must be too.

The sky was the color of cat vomit.

I wonder why they never come back," Shay said. "Just to visit." Tally swallowed. "Because we're so ugly, Skinny, that's why.