Quotes from Neal Shusterman

There's the answer, but an answer means nothing if the world doesn't first hear the question.

Although I accepted her thanks graciously and felt good about it in the moment, I had trouble sleeping that night. To this day, I still can't understand why.

Greyson was inoculated with a dose of his new life even before arriving home. The publicar he took read him the riot act even before it left the Nimbus Academy.

Immortality cannot temper the folly or frailty of youth. Innocence is doomed to die a senseless death at our own hands, a casualty of the mistakes we can never undo. So, we lay to rest the wide-eyed wonder we once thrived upon, replacing it with scars of which we never speak, too knotted for any amount of technology to repair.

Then he left without paying the bill, because no bill was, or would ever be, brought to a scythe.

But like so many things, once we had possession of infinite knowledge, it suddenly seemed less important. Less urgent. Yes, we know everything, but I often wonder if anyone bothers to look at all that knowledge

Therein lies the paradox of the profession," Faraday said. "Those who wish to have the job should not have it . . . and those who would most refuse to kill are the only ones who should.

Except, of course, when he made shit up.

Curiosity was a cat killer?

If technology allows us a new way to give, how could it be wrong?

I love the way it rains here, he told her. It reminds me that some forces of nature can never be entirely subdued. They are eternal, which is a far better thing to be than immortal.

Yes, she said, I . . .seek and answer to the burning question: Is it A-flat or G-sharp? And one of the others said, Don't even get me started!

The way Miracolina sees it, if someone would rather blow themselves up than be tithed, well, that's like stealing from the collection plate, isn't it? It's just plain wrong.

Maybe scythes hired people to sleep for them.

Mr. Akron," says a girl, fourteen or so—he can't get over the fact that so many of the kids, particularly the younger ones, are not only ridiculously respectful, but think that Akron is somehow part of his name—

I was never going to amount to much anyway, but now, statistically speaking, there's a better chance that some part of me will go on to greatness somewhere in the world. I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.

Intense to the point of being off-putting.

He doesn't respond; he just kisses her on the back of her head, to maintain his image as the safest port in her storm. It's a powerful feeling to know you make others feel safe.

My greatest wish for humanity is not for peace or for comfort or for 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. There's no version of God that can help us if we ever lose that.

She was good. Very, very good.

Lief shook his head. "No grown-ups here. Only kids. Kids and monsters." "Monsters!" said Nick. "That's great. That's wonderful. I'm so glad I asked.

I have found that building a sandbox around a domineering child, then allowing that child to preside over it, frees the adults to do real work.

And the pain… the pain of my awareness is unbearable. Because my eyes do not close. Ever. And so all I can do is watch unblinkingly as my beloved humankind slowly weaves the rope it will use to hang itself.

A month ago, Rowan would have denied that he could ever become such a monster, but now he wasn't so sure. The pressure to surrender was greater every day. He had to hope that if Volta had never truly surrendered to the darkness, then maybe he might stand a chance as well.