Quotes from Eliot Schrefer

What SAT tutoring does is it invisibly alters the admissions pool so a school could try to be as egalitarian as they can, but if a student is SAT-tutored, and their score goes up 200 points in a year, and the college admissions committee has no idea that the student got tutored, all of a sudden it's shifting the pool back toward old money.

He's a stranger, a lover, and my life partner. We have lived and died lifetimes together, and it makes me shiver every time that odd truth comes over me.

Intimacy is the only shield against insanity. Intimacy, not knowledge. Intimacy, not power.

A little self-hatred keeps a person interesting

Emotions have their effects even after you try to bully them out of existence.

Plenty of organisms live for a season, in order for those who come next to have a chance, Mayflies, daffodils, the octopus. We can accept that?' 'Well, we're hardwired not to accept our own demise. Daffodils are a lot more chill about it.' 'Okay, but we can be like daffodils together.

This lifetime is yours to make what you will of it

I am in a waiting room without end, without location, without time or place. If I go outside, I die before I get any answers. I exist only in a theoretical way, like a point on a coordinate plane. I am the simulation.

I can offer you water or, um, water. Some of the pouches have a slightly different font, so you can choose serif hydration or sans serif hydration.

Humans are animals, too, you know.

the primary trait of young adult literature is that the author's emphasis is on plot and character and not on his own brilliance. And because few people talk about whether a young adult work is commercial or literary; the two are still in sync, and everyone's benefitting.

Traditions are just peer pressure from dead people.

Insanity used to be a stranger that lived on the other side of the world. Now it's moved next door. It's only a matter of time until it becomes shipmate, lover, self.

we didn't have the day-in, day-out knowledge of each other that most mothers and daughters have. It's not like she was a stranger; we had too much history for that. But at the same time, I couldn't say I knew her well. Or at least well enough to see her thoughts.

Kodiak shrugs. I work out. I roll my eyes. I noticed. I noticed you noticing, he says, his eyes suddenly back on mine.

It's weirdly reassuring: when adoration is selfish, it's not going anywhere.

I could stare at this forever: swirling stars in the background and a human being, a real live human, lost in a task.

I will unravel here.

Luckily Rollan was more unflappable. He stepped forward, bravely brandishing his long dagger, however pathetic it looked compared to the teeth of Cabaro.

You have to learn when to ignore suffering so that you're strong enough to fight it when the time is right.

a recent study showed they were our closest relatives, sharing 98.7% of our DNA.

He did an excellent Tarik impression, bringing his voice low and softly accenting the ends of his sentences. Scrubber, his raccoon, flailed and squirmed on the ground, pretending to be Monte himself. It was a light moment in the

I knew at least Banalia was dead; that had happened right in front of my eyes. They would either eat her now or smoke her body to sell the meat. It made my stomach turn--the DNA in that meat was almost 99 percent the same as human DNA; it was nearly cannibalism. But the men were hungry.

General Gar, the leader of the Conquerors, was waiting for them. The Devourer.