Neal Shusterman quotes:

I have a color-coded computer spreadsheet that divides things down to chapter fragments. Each character's point-of-view is a different color. The text of the manuscript is color-coded the same way. The last thing I do before submitting the manuscript is turn all those colors back to black.

Try to see things differently - It's the only way to get a clearer perspective on the world and on your life.

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.

I gotta go to the bathroom," Emby mumbles. "You should have thought of that before you left," says Hayden, putting on his best mother voice. "How many times do we have to tell you? Always use the potty before climbing into a shipping crate.

I love writing music, but it seems I'm always writing words, so I don't get much time to do it.

You look spectacluar, Cam.' She smoothes out his shirt and straightens his tie. 'You look like the shining star you are!''Let's hope I don't give birth to complex elements.'She looks at him quizzically.'Supernova,' he says. 'If I'm a shining star, let's hope I don't blow up.

She sighed, knowing she couldn't push it any further"Thank you for being so... merciful," Allie said"But I would appreciate it if Pea-brain here would keep his hands off me.""That's Pinhead," corrected the boy"Pea-brain works in the engine room.

The woman wears a floral print blouse with lots of leaves and pink flowers. Risa would like to attack her with a weed whacker.

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

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.

You don't like her, do you?" "Who, me? No, I love her dearly. Evil scheming bitches are my favorite kind of people." (Risa)

Then Jix locked eyes with him and said very calmly, "If you hit her, I will open my mouth wide enough to swallow you whole, force you through my bowels, then out my other end." Avalon scowled at him. "You can't do that." "Try me," Jix said. Avalon backed off, then angrily stormed away, and Jix winked at Jill. "One in five.

Then you'd better listen, because me sounding like Bronte is one of the signs of the apocalypse-and if the end fo the world is coming, good deeds could earn you Judgment day brownie points.

I imagine the center of the Earth must be a crowded place by now, but perhaps it is the spirits of those of us residing there that keep the Earth alive and green.

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 post on Twitter regularly, and when I checked my followers, I saw that my own characters were following me. They sounded eerily like my characters would actually sound. It was a very surreal thing to see come to life digitally!

On a sunny Tuesday - for it seems so many awful things happen on a Tuesday - six astronauts and one schoolteacher attempted to pierce the sky. Instead they touched the stars.

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!

I'm alone. And I'm crying. And no one is coming to the crib. And the nightlight has burned out. And I'm mad. I'm so mad. Left frontal lobe. I...I...I don't feel so good. Left occipital lobe. I... don't remember where...Left parietal lobe. I...I...I can't remember my name,but...but...Right temporal...but I'm still here. Right frontal. I'm still here... Right occipital.I'm still...Right parietal. I'm...Cerebellum. I'm...Thalamus. I...Hypothalamus. I...Hippocampus...Medulla........................

When you truly start to care about someone you become vulnerable to all sorts of things.

Sharks have a deadly form of claustrophobia. It's not so much fear of enclosed spaces as it is inability to exist in them. No one knows why. Some say it's the metal in aquariums that throws their equilibrium off. But whatever it is, big sharks don't last long in captivity

People would cheer throw confetti and then go about breaking the resolutions they had made only moments before.

We can lie to ourselves, saying we believe one thing, and sometimes we convince other's it's true, with the hope that by convincing others, we can convince ourselves. Wars are often waged not because of what we believe, but because of the things we want others to believe.

No," says Ariana. "It was a dream. Reality got in the way, that's all.

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.

Live by your impulses, and you'll be just like them. You're better than that, aren't you, Red?

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?

Then Jix locked eyes with him and said very calmly, "If you hit her, I will open my mouth wide enough to swallow you whole, force you through my bowels, then out my other end."Avalon scowled at himYou can't do that.""Try me," Jix said. Avalon backed off, then angrily stormed away, and Jix winked at JillOne in five."

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."

So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?"

Leadership is about keeping toilets flushing," the Admiral once said. "Unless you're on the battlefront. Then it's about staying alive. Neither are pleasant.

Touch is a freaky thing when you're not used to it. It makes you feel all kinds of things.

... 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.

Once in a while our school has half days, and the teachers spend the afternoon 'in service,' which I think must be a group therapy for having to deal with us.

What's the point of living if you're going to hate the world? Guard your heart if you have to, but don't shut it away.

...the Statue of Liberty's got this invitation: 'Give me your tired, your poor, your reeking homeless--' 'Huddled masses,' said Ira. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' ... Okay, fine. So like everybody in the old countries says, 'Hey, I'm a huddled mass,' and they all wanna come over.

I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.

the captain is supposed to go down with the ship" . "unless the first mate knocks him out and throws him in a lifeboat

It's called loitering, which is like littering with human beings as the trash.

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.

...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.

Milestone! This is a momentous occasion," he tells her cheerily. "It should be witnessed by a friend." She throws him an icy gaze, and he does a verbal back pedal. "Aaaand since no friends are present, I'll have to do.

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.

So much of my life had been under tight control. So much of Quinn's life had been wild insanity. What we needed now was both: a directed burst of controlled insanity.

Our conversation with the supermarket manager had been about as helpful as a New Jersey road sign, and if you've ever been there, you know the signs don't tell you the exit you're coming up to, they only point out the exits you've just missed.

Who says I'm insane?Oh you're sane alright. You're so sane, you scare me.You're so sane, it's insane.

Beautiful machines from 1920s and '30s, when automobiles were both monstrous and sexy at the same time.

Which is worse, Risa often wondered, to have tens of thousands of babies that no one wanted or to silently make then go away before they were even born

He (Connor) will only do the wrong thing when it's the right thing to do. - Risa

Which was worse, Risa often wondered--to have tens of thousands of babies that no one wanted, or to silently make them go away before they were even born? On different days Risa had different answers.

You don't like her, do you? Who, me? No, I love her dearly. Evil scheming bitches are my favorite kind of people. (Risa)

Lev looks at Risa, almost afraid to ask the obvious question. Finally he says, 'Uh...why do we have a baby?''Ask him,' says Risa.Stone-faced, Conner looks out of the window. 'They're looking for two boys and a girl. Having a baby will throw them off.''Great,' snaps Risa. 'Maybe we should all pick up a baby along the way.

Looks are deceiving, Risa saysAfter all, when I first saw you I thought you looked reasonably intelligent.

Please give me a single reason why I shouldn't hurl myself beneath the wheels of that bus.

We move in and out of darkness and light all our lives. Right now I'm pleased to be in the light.

...You know something, don't you?""I know lots of things--your inquiry needs to be more specific.""Just answer the question.""True/false or multiple choice?

Perhaps that is the greatest crime of conquest--that a civilization is denied the right to evolve beyond its own embarrassment.

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.

Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are.

The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.

This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds.

You should never apologize for existing, Lev. Not even to all those people out there who wish you didn't.

It's always the lesser of two evils.''I don't see why there have to be any evils at all.'-Connor

I've got a secret for you," she whispered with n unpleasant grin on her face, "Something terrible is going to happen. Something terrible... and something wonderful.

Lev smiles. "Leave it to you to turn someone else's screwup into gold

Maybe that had been his plan all along, or maybe not. But one thing's for certain- now that I had said it, it was his plan.

Respect doesn't come without a little resentment.

I'm sure my parents must be proud. Or horrified. Or are bitterly arguing about whether they're proud or horrified, and have already hired lawyers to resolve the dispute. -Hayden Upchurch

We're this big melting pot, but someone turned up the heat too high, and the stew started to burn. Gangs, crime, fights, and fear are now a regular part of our local stew.

On my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize that the expression spoiled rotten meant exactly that. We kids were the apples of our parents' eyes, and I, for one, was rotting from inside out.

No true hero ever believes that they are one.

does a sick society get so used to its illness that it can't remember being well? what if the memory is too dangerous for the people who like things the way they are?

Heaven might shine bright, but so do flames.

So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?

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

I thought 'UnSouled' would come in at around 400 pages, but it took 650 pages, and even then I felt like I was rushing the conclusion, so I asked my editor and publisher if I could divide it again. So a sequel became a trilogy, and the trilogy became a tetralogy - although we're not calling it that.

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?

I'll never understand how a man can live his life With his finger on the self-destruct button, Holding it there day after day, Blinded by an obsession to press it But lacking the conviction to do even that.

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?

Whoever invented the spork should be killed.

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.

Teenage rebellion is for suburban schoolchildren. Get over it.

You know that feeling you get when your leg falls asleep? Well, I suddenly had that feeling in my spine. Like termites were chewing through the marrow in my backbone.

You...you lost your faith?" "No...just my convictions. I still very much believe in God- just not a god who condones human tithing." Lev begins to feel himself choking up with an unexpected flood of feeling, all the emotions that had been building up throughout their talk- throughout the weeks- arriving all at once like a sonic boom. "I never knew there was a choice.

On a hairpin turn, above the dead forest, on no day in particular, a white Toyota crashed into a black Mercedes, for a moment blending into a blur of gray.

You may feel a tugging sensation near your ankles.

There's a set of unspoken rules we live by when it comes to fighting. We can't help it. It comes from living in a civilized world. Even when you're fighting your hardest, somewhere deep down, you know how far you can go. But today the rules are gone. Today I fight not to win, but to destroy.

It's a big question. Where do you begin to change the world?

Unwinds didn't go out with a bang-they didn't even go out with a whimper. they went out with the silence of a candle flame pinched between two fingers.

Fight, flight, and screw up royaly.

The Bill of Life was signed, the Unwind Accord went into effect, and the war was over. Everyone was so happy to end the war, no one cared about the consequences

They signed the unwind order just to spite each other,but laugh,laugh,laugh,Hayden, because if you ever stop laughing,it might just tear you apart worse than a Chop Shop.

Before I start, I trick myself into thinking I know what's going to happen in the story, but the characters have ideas of their own, and I always go with the character's choices. Most of the time I discover plot twists and directions that are better than what I originally had planned.

"You...you lost your faith?" "No...just my convictions. I still very much believe in God- just not a god who condones human tithing." Lev begins to feel himself choking up with an unexpected flood of feeling, all the emotions that had been building up throughout their talk-throughout the weeks-arriving all at once like a sonic boom. "I never knew there was a choice".

(Why did they call them sneakers if it was so hard to sneak in them?)

...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.

...New Beginning to the same old story

...One thing you learn when you've lived as long as I have-people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light.

...the first sign of civilization is always trash.

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

A pedestal is the most insidious prison ever devised.

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

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.

Already Roland feels his limbs starting to go numb. He swallows hard. "I hate this. I hate you. I hate all of you." "I understand.

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.

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

Beautiful is dangerous.

Because if their own parents didn't care enough about them to keep them, who would want them in Heaven?

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

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?!

Connor smiles with mocking warmth at him, and glances at the tattoo on his wrist. "I like your dolphin.

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.