Quotes from Neal Shusterman

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.

How can you pass laws about things that nobody knows?" "They do it all the time," says Hayden. "That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.

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.

Love turns a heart to crystal...Much more valuable, but much more fragile.

The sad truth about humanity...is that people believe what they're told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.

Love, Allie concluded, wasn't blind, it simply saw alternate dimensions.

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.

I thought 'UnSouled' would come in at around 400 pages, but it took 650 pages, and even then I felt like I was rushing the conclusion, so I asked my editor and publisher if I could divide it again. So a sequel became a trilogy, and the trilogy became a tetralogy - although we're not calling it that.

It's funny how a flame can only burn your hand if you move too slow, you can tease it all you want and it never gets you, if your quick enough.

Because if their own parents didn't care enough about them to keep them, who would want them in Heaven?

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.

The Bill of Life was signed, the Unwind Accord went into effect, and the war was over. Everyone was so happy to end the war, no one cared about the consequences

Because rain is the closest thing I have to tears.

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

The fear of not living is a deep, abiding dread of watching your own potential decompose into irredeemable disappointment when 'should be' gets crushed by what is. Sometimes I think it would be easier to die than to face that, because 'what could have been' is much more highly regarded than 'what should have been.' Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.

every time he forces himself to think before acting, it's her voice in his head telling him to slow down. He wants to tell her, but she's always so busy in the medical jet—and you don't just go to somebody and say, I'm a better person because you're in my head.

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.

Would you rather die, or be unwound? Now he finally knows the answer. Maybe this is what he wanted. Maybe it's why he stood there and taunted Roland. Because he'd rather be killed with a furious hand than dismembered with cool indifference.

Human nature is both predictable and mysterious; prone to great and sudden advances, yet still mired in despicable self-interest.

You...you lost your faith? No...just my convictions. I still very much believe in God- just not a god who condones human tithing. Lev begins to feel himself choking up with an unexpected flood of feeling, all the emotions that had been building up throughout their talk- throughout the weeks- arriving all at once like a sonic boom. I never knew there was a choice.

the first sign of civilization is always trash.

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.

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.

But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not all of them lead to hell.