Quotes from Neal Shusterman

You've got questions coming out of you like farts on Thanksgiving.

As for the other team, there would be much weeping and gnashing of teeth, as the Bible says.

I don't want to go to the government, the Schwa says. Yeah, I said. They'd dissect him and put him in a formaldehyde fish tank in Area 51. Howie shook his head. Area 51 is for aliens, he says. They'd probably put him in Area 52.

If more people had been organ donors Unwinding never would have happened.

No mirrors in the real world had the ability to reach inside you the way these did. You could tell yourself that the mirrors were simply telling lies, but you'd be wrong. They took tiny truths, swelling them out of proportion?and the fact that there was a kernel of truth in what they reflected made the effect devastating.

Are you calling me stupid?says Emby. I think I just did. Hayden laughs. Hey, the Mouth Breather's right-unwinding does help people. If it wasn't for unwinding, there would be bald guys again-and wouldn't that be horrible?

I hadn't lived a real life?I'd had just a model of a life. Everything I did, everything I thought , was suspended safely by strings, too high up for anyone to damage. Zero contact, zero risk. Now those strings had been cut and I was going to die, never having had a chance to live without them.

Then they pull onto Route 66, heading east into a world that's ripe for saving

Picking locks was not a skill he had ever cultivated, but he persisted day after day, turning the tip of his talon into different ways of approaching a keyhole. He never tired, and he ever gave up...because if there was any justice in the universe, he wouldn't be trapped here forever.

Revelations are never convenient, and always annoying.

Rumors are like rain through an old roof. The effort of finding the source is greater than the cost of a new roof.

This is the true meaning of alone; Levi Jedediah Calder suddenly realizing he no longer exists.

If we gleaned every asshole," Scythe Volta had once told Rowan, "there'd be virtually no one left.

Luck, however, is too dumb to remain consistent

Okay. And what are your pronouns, Jeri?" Jeri found it refreshing that she asked so directly.

I was actually being sincere," Connor admits. "But I'm happy to insult you, if that's what you want.

Shouldn't those who were born to expect death be the sole subjects of gleaning?" went the popular wisdom. But it was bigotry masquerading as wisdom. Selfishness posing as enlightenment.

Being ignored has its advantages...Dignity doesn't grow under a microscope.

Which is worse - to be despised, or to be ignored? — From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie

Numbness was a mere purgatory of gray. No, there was a much worse place. Darkness masquerading as enlightenment. It was a place of royal blue studded with diamonds that glistened like stars.

Even though Connor can't see Hayden's face, he can hear the truth of it in his voice. There was no hint of evasion in Hayden's words. This was raw-honesty, void of Hayden's usual flip attitude. It was perhaps the first truly honest thing Connor had ever heard him say. Yes, it is an answer, Connor says. Maybe it's the best answer of all. If more people could admit they really don't know, maybe there never would have been a Heartland War.

But just because we have the ability to label it, doesn't mean we really know what's in the box.

He felt a fluttering inside his chest that he mistook for an air pocket - probably left from when he pushed himself through the cage. He had no way of knowing that the fluttering was a single beat from the fleeting memory of a heart.

My greatest wish for humanity is not for peace or comfort or joy. It is that we all still die a little inside every time we witness the death of another. For only the pain of empathy will keep us human.