Quotes from Neal Shusterman

People aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness all our lives.

the kind of people who can't bend without breaking

Like everything else in his life, he crashed forward, caution the first casualty.

shouldn't the punishment for failure be the awful knowledge of that failure?

The longer we live, the quicker the days seem to pass. How troublesome that is when we live forever. A year seems to pass in a matter of weeks. Decades fly with no milestones to mark them. We become settled in the inconsequential drudgery of our own lives, until suddenly we look at ourselves in the mirror and see a face we barely recognize begging us to turn a corner and be young again.

It wasn't just that he didn't see the big picture, sometimes he saw a different picture entirely.

So Connor stands there with secret anticipation each time there's a group of new arrivals, hoping beyond hope he'll find that self-righteous, self-important, pain-in-the-ass Lev still alive.

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

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

schwa : The faint vowel sound in many unstressed syllables in the English language. It is signified by the pronunciation uh and represented by the symbol upside down e. For example, the e in overlook , the a in forgettable , and the o in run-of-the-mill . It is the most common vowel sound in the English language.

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.

A successful lie is not fueled by the liar; it is fueled by the willingness of the listener to believe. You can't expose a lie without first shattering the will to believe it. That is why leading people to truth is so much more effective than merely telling them.

So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?

Sometimes there are moments when we objectively face the never, and it overwhelms us.

I long for the luxury of being impractical.

Love the ponytail, Connor says, pointing at his hair. Lev shrugs. It's just because my hair is so tatted. But maybe I'll keep it. Don't, Connor tells him. I lied. I hate it.

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.

It's kind of like 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.

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.

If pennies become worthless, does that devalue our thoughts to less than nothing?

As your older brother, it's my sacred duty to save you from yourself. She brings her fists down on the table, making all the dinner plates jump. The ONLY reason you're fifteen minutes older than me is because you cut in front of the line, as usual!

Do you know that if you take the books in an average school library and stretched out all those words into a single line, the line would go all the way around the world? Actually, I made that up, but doesn't it sound like it should be true?

There are books I will never finish reading, games I will never finish playing, movies that I've started and will never see the end of. Ever. Sometimes there are moments when we objectively face the never, and it overwhelms us.

I am the blade that is swung by your hand, Slicing a rainbow's arc, I am the clapper, but you are the bell, Tolling the gathering dark. If you are the singer, then I am the song, A threnody, requiem, dirge. You've mad me the answer for all the world's need, Humanity's undying urge