Quotes from Neal Shusterman

You can't change laws without first changing human nature... You can't change human nature without first changing the law.

when something drastic happens, there's a lag time. It's not quite denial, and not quite shock, but more like a mental free fall.

Had she lived, who knows what she might have done. Perhaps she could have changed the world and redeemed her family name. I choose to be Scythe Anastasia. I vow to become the change that might have been.

You see, a conflict always begins with an issue—a difference of opinion, an argument. But by the time it turns into a war, the issue doesn't matter anymore, because now it's about one thing and one thing only: how much each side hates the other.

I must be doing something right if the crazies think I'm as powerful as the Antichrist.

Please rate your level of annoyance on a scale of one to ten." "Are you serious?" "We can't proceed with intake until you answer the question." "Uh … five," he said, "No Ã¢â'¬â€œ six; the question made it worse.

If you say, 'May the Fork be with you,' I'll smash you with the other half of this hanger.

I will always be there on the horizon,' I tell her. And with infinite sorrow, she says, 'I believe that. But sadly I am no longer looking out of that window.

You're confusing boredom with obsession.

I almost told her everything right then. I wanted to tell her about the Wolves, and how I was supposed to hate them, but when you spend your days with evil, some of it is bound to soak into your clothes, like cigar smoke in a closed room.

Can't you see? I don't get to do ANYTHING I want! Because I'm too busy just trying to stay alive. And you come here with your fancy school uniform and your mother's jewelry and your neighbor's freaking car, and you think you can buy your way in? What kind of idiot buys his way into the bottom?

Everything has meaning, or nothing has meaning. Which world would you rather live in?

The good Lord wouldn't have put it in your heart if it wasn't right.

Morrison kept looking to everyone else, probably hoping someone would provide him with an opinion, because he wasn't ready to have one of his own.

I shouldn't be here," I appeal to the captain, wondering if I've told him this before. "I have midterms and papers due and dirty clothes I never picked up from my bedroom floor, and I have friends, lots of friends.

We could have been called reapers, Goddard said, but our founders saw fit to call us scythes - because we are the weapons in mankind's immortal hand. You are a fine weapon, Rowan, sharp, and precise. And when you strike, you are glorious to behold.

There is a fine line between freedom and permission. The former is necessary. The latter is dangerous.

This is how he always imagined- a dangerous place full of mystery and violent kids.

I don't think God have us this anymore than he gives little kids cancer or makes poor people lottery winners.... if anything, he gives us courage to deal.

And why? Because of words? Words don't hurt you. Which is one of the hugest criminal lies perpetrated by adults against children in this world. Because words hurt more than any physical pain.

Reality is overrated—but they'll remember thinking they knew the secrets of the universe

Funny how morality, which always seems so black and white can be influenced so completely by what you were raised to believe.

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

There's no telling how far down it goes," the captain says, the left side of his mustache twitching like the tail of a rat. "Fall into that unknowable abyss, and you'll be counting the days before you reach bottom.