Best 298 quotes of Neal Shusterman on MyQuotes

Adulthood can do the most horrific things to the best of people.

A family is a collection of strangers trapped in a web of DNA and forced to cope.

All this time, Lev ever realized what he needed. He did not need to be adored or pitied. He needed to be forgiven. Not by God, who is all forgiving. Not by people like Marcus and Pastor Dan, who would always stand by his side. He needed to be forgiven by an unforgiving world.

... always been a goal-oriented girl. it was both her strength and her weakness. She had a drive to completion that always gets things done, but it also made her inflexible, and stubborn.

And," added Mikey. "she's my sister." The others looked at him for a moment, and broke out laughing. "Yeah, yeah," Squirrel scoffed, "and the McGill is my cousin." Now Allie burst out laughing, which made Mikey more annoyed. "If the McGill was your cousin," Mikey said, "I can guarantee he'd disown you.

And he thinks that if his soul had a form, this is what it would be. A baby sleeping in his arms.

And next to Allie, the screamer, once more reminded of his job, began to wail in Allie's ear. Reflexively Allie clapped her hand over his mouth. "That," she said, "is totally uncalled for. Don't do that again. Ever." The screamer looked at her with worried eyes. "Are we clear on this subject?" said Allie. The screamer nodded and she removed her hand. "Can I scream a little?" he asked. "No," said Allie. "Your screaming days are over." "Darn." And he was quiet thereafter.

...And perhaps you can sense, in some small twisting loop of your gut, the convergence of the wrong, of the right, and of the woefully misguided. If you do, then pay sharp attention to the moment you wake, and the moment you fall asleep...For maybe then you will know, without a shadow of a doubt, which is which.

Anger is only our friend when we know its caliber and how to aim it.

As your older brother, it's my sacred duty to save you from yourself." She brings her fists down on the table, making all the dinner plates jump. "The ONLY reason you're fifteen minutes older than me is because you cut in front of the line, as usual!

But now we've finally taken full possession of what is rightfully ours, because everyone must feel their own pain--and as awful as that is, it's also wonderful.

But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is. -Connor

Can I believe in that God too?

Cities are never random. No matter how chaotic they might seem, everything about them grows out of a need to solve a problem. In fact, a city is nothing more than a solution to a problem, that in turn creates more problems that need more solutions, until towers rise, roads widen, bridges are built, and millions of people are caught up in a mad race to feed the problem-solving, problem-creating frenzy.

Conner Lassiter. Scheduled to be unwound the 21st of November-until you went AWOL. You caused an accident that killed a bus driver, left dozens of others injured, and shut down an interstate highway for hours. Then, on top of it, you took a hostage AND shot a Juvey-cop with his own tranq gun." ..."He's the Akron AWOL?!

Cowards hide [...] but warriors lie and wait [...] the only difference is whether you're motivated by fear or purpose.

Crawley reached into the pocket of his fancy robe - a dinner jacket, I think it's called. The kind of thing Professer Plum would wear before killing Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with the candlestick.

Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.

Don’t I have a choice in this?” But when she looks behind her, the answer is clear. There are two guards waiting to make sure that she has no choice at all. And as they lead her away, she thinks of Mr. Durkin. With a bitter laugh, Risa realizes that he may get his wish after all. Someday he may see her hands playing in Carnegie Hall. Unfortunately, the rest of Risa won’t be there.

Do you know that if you take the books in an average school library and stretched out all those words into a single line, the line would go all the way around the world? Actually, I made that up, but doesn't it sound like it should be true?

Either things happen for a reason, or they happen for no reason at all. Either one's life is a thread in a glorious tapestry or humanity is just a hopelessly tangled knot.

Eventually your body will learn the alliances it has to make with itself,' Kenny had said - as if Cam was a factory full of strike-prone workers, or worse, a clutch of slaves forced into unwanted labor.

[...] 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.

Fight, flight, and screw up royaly.

Fine," Connor tells him. "Think about stuff until your head explodes. But the only thing I want to think about is surviving to eighteen." I find your shallowness both refreshing and disappointing at the same time. Do you think that means I need therapy?

For standing between Cody and his pain is my obligation, and standing between my uncle and his pain is my rent, but the pain I coax from Bronte is my joy

Heaven might shine bright, but so do flames.

From the end of the bar, the bartender threw a sidelong look at him, so Clarence pulled out a broken Bluetooth headset and fixed it to his ear. "I learned this trick while traveling with Mikey," Clarence told Nick. "Makes my brand of crazy the same as everyone else's.

Getting to know someone in blind darkness changes your impression of them.

Great tragedies have great consequences. They ripple through the fabric of this world and the next. When the loss is too great for either world to bear, Everlost absorbs the shock, like a cushion between the two.

Happiness is not a state of being. Happiness is a vector, it is movement.

He also keeps his silence when Bible passages become shredded to justify unwinding, and kids start to see the face of God in the fragments.

He does not deserve this. He has done many things, not all good, but he does not deserve this. And he never did get his priest.

He only wishes there were something that would heal the scars in his mind, which he can still feel. He sees his mind now as an archipelago of islands that he labors to build bridges between - and while he's had great success engineering the most spectacular of bridges, he suspects there are some islands that he'll never reach.

He's become like that briefcase in the ground-full of gems yet void of light, so nothing sparkles, nothing shines.

Hey," says Hayden, "I'm Switzerland; neutral as can be, and also with great chocolate." "Get lost," Roland tells him. "Already am." And Hayden strolls away.

His life has been like a ballpark, hasn't it? All lines, structure, and rules, never changing. But now he's been hit over the wall into unknown territory.

History is written by the victors--and when there is no victors, it all winds up in the corporate shredders.

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

How can you do the right thing when you can't figure out what that is? When all you have before you are choices in various shades of wrong?

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.

How do you judge the brightness of a light when you’re the source? A spotlight can never see the shadows it casts.

How easy is murder when one calls it by a different name? How much easier is it for the conscience to condone "reaping" than "killing"-and when one knows that death isn't the end, does it stop the killing hand for fear of retribution, or does it simply make it easier to kill, because, if life continues, how can murder be murder at all?

How many kids are in the Graveyard?" "A bunch." "Who sends your supplies?" "George Washington. Or is it Abraham Lincoln? I forget." "How often do you receive new arrivals?" "About as often as you beat your wife.

How much do you know about the Heartland War?' Connor shrugs. 'It was the last chapter in our history textbook, but we had state testing, so we never got to it.

I believe that we have free will. I believe we get the chance to make choices in our lives. Not everything is set in stone from the moment we're born. We choose our destiny, our ultimate fate. But I also think that we don't realize the choices we've made until after we make them. We're racing down a freeway, only to realize we've missed all the exits, and the only direction we can go is dead ahead.

I came running down the stairs that morning, like it was Christmas. My parents were already up. In my family, presents never waited; they were there upon waking. Our family has a problem with what they called delayed gratification. We want what we want when we want it, and we always want it now.

I don't know what happens to our consciousness when we're unwound," says Connor. "I don't even know when that consciousness starts. But I do know this." He pauses to make sure all of them are listening. "We have a right to our lives!" The kids go wild. "We have a right to choose what happens to our bodies!" The cheers reach fever pitch. "We deserve a world where both those things are possible— and it's our job to help make that world.

...if more people had been organ donors, unwinding never would have happened...but people like to keep what's theirs, even after they're dead.

If your heart tells you something but your mind tells you something else, which do you believe? Both are just as apt to lie. In fact, they play at deceit all the time. Mostly they balance each other, giving us that crucial reality check. But what happens on the rare occasions when they conspire together?