Top 500 Neal Shusterman Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Tomorrow is going to have to take care of itself for a while,” Alyssa says. Then she adds, “Yesterday, too.”

— Neal Shusterman

102. “Most people have two emergency modes. But Connor always knew he had three: Fight, Flight, and Screw Up Royally. It was a dangerous mental circuit.”

— Neal Shusterman

103. “Well, she could learn self control tomorrow. Today she wanted pizza.”

— Neal Shusterman

104. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

105. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

106. “Wailing that the sky is falling does nothing to stop it.”

— Neal Shusterman

107. “I vow to become the change that might have been.”

— Neal Shusterman

108. “To deny humanity the lesson of consequences would be a mistake. And I do not make mistakes.”

— Neal Shusterman

109. “That’s exactly what the scythedom is: high school with murder.”

— Neal Shusterman

110. “What must life have been like in the Age of Mortality? Full of passions, both good and bad. Fear giving rise to faith. Despair giving meaning to elation. They say even the winters were colder and the summers were warmer in those days.”

— Neal Shusterman

111. “They all think medicine should be magic, and they become mad at me when it’s not.”

— Neal Shusterman

112. “Every Unwind believes in their heart of hearts that it won’t happen to them – that their parents, no matter how strained things get, will be smart enough not to fall for the net ads, TV commercials, and billboards that say things like “Unwinding: the sensible solution.”

— Neal Shusterman

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

— Neal Shusterman

114. “Ain’t no one gonna tell you what’s in your heart,” he tells Lev. “You gotta find that out for yourself.”

— Neal Shusterman

115. “Innocence is doomed to die a senseless death at our own hands, a casualty of the mistakes we can never undo.”

— Neal Shusterman

116. “Our hope is that Challenger Deep will comfort those who have been there, letting them know that they are not alone. We also hope that it will help others to empathize, and to understand what it’s like to sail the dark, unpredictable waters of mental illness.”

— Neal Shusterman

117. “Death makes the whole world kin.”

— Neal Shusterman

118. “While freedom gives rise to growth and enlightenment, permission allows evil to flourish in a light of day that would otherwise destroy it.”

— Neal Shusterman

119. “Is that why you’re here?” Ben blurted “To glean one of us?” Scythe Faraday offered an unreadable smile. “I’m here for dinner.”

— Neal Shusterman

120. “Without the threat of suffering, we can’t experience true joy.”

— Neal Shusterman

121. “Better to be numb than plagued by longing for something that could never be.”

— Neal Shusterman

122. “We’re exploring the possibility of building a wall to stem the exodus.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Goddard said. “Only idiots build walls.”

— Neal Shusterman

123. “Would the Thunderhead grieve our passing, I wonder? And if so, would it grieve as the child who has lost a parent, or as the parent who could not save a petulant child from its own poor choices?”

— Neal Shusterman

124. “That’s what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.”

— Neal Shusterman

125. “People aren’t all good, and people aren’t all bad. We move in and out of darkness all our lives.”

— Neal Shusterman

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

— Neal Shusterman

127. “You see demons in the eyes of the world, and the world sees a bottomless pit in yours.”

— Neal Shusterman

128. “Yesterday you were gods. Today you are mortal. Your death is my gift to you. Accept it with grace and humility.”

— Neal Shusterman

129. “Who am I? The sum of your dreams, the thrill you refuse to grasp, the unknown you fear.”

— Neal Shusterman

130. “Even now, she looked radiant to him. How ridiculous that he’d be romanticizing her in these final hours. What could have once been love was now the resignation of a heart long broken.”

— Neal Shusterman

131. “There are mysteries in Everlost. Some of them are wonderful, and others scary. They should all be explored, though- perhaps that’s why we’re here: to experience the good and the bad that Everlost has to offer.”

— Neal Shusterman

132. “We are imperfect beings,” Munira said. “How could we ever fit in a perfect world?”

— Neal Shusterman

133. “Time is never of the essence until someone decides that it is.”

— Neal Shusterman

134. “Wasn’t it Jacqui who told us the human body is sity percent water? Well, now I know what the rest is. The rest is dust, the rest is ash, it’s sorrow and it’s grief... But above all that, in spite of all that, binding us together... is hope. And joy. And a wellspring of all the things that still might be.”

— Neal Shusterman

135. “This is the true meaning of alone; Levi Jedediah Calder suddenly realizing he no longer exists.”

— Neal Shusterman

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

— Neal Shusterman

137. “Hope is a terrible thing to lose. Sometimes that wounded space gets filled with scar tissue, bitter, ugly, and angry.”

— Neal Shusterman

138. “They say you never know who’s the real hero and who’s the real coward until you’re looking death in the face. I’ve always been afraid of plenty of things, but fear isn’t what makes you a coward. It’s how depraved your heart becomes when fear gets pumped through it.”

— Neal Shusterman

139. “When the truth hurts we always hate the messenger.”

— Neal Shusterman

140. “Perhaps that is why we must, by law, keep a record. A public journal, testifying to those who will never die and those who are yet to be born, as to why we human beings do the things we do. We are instructed to write down not just our deeds but our feelings, because it must be known that we do have feelings. Remorse. Regret. Sorrow too great to bear. Because if we didn’t feel those things, what monsters would we be?”

— Neal Shusterman

141. “Everyone is guilty of something, and everyone still harbors a memory of childhood innocence, no matter how many layers of life wrap around it. Humanity is innocent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true.”

— Neal Shusterman

142. “Yes, yes, but you have to remember people take from a situation the thing that they need.”

— Neal Shusterman

143. “Because rain is the closest thing I have to tears.”

— Neal Shusterman

144. “I wish you could have felt that slap I wish you could feel the pain.”

— Neal Shusterman

145. “The pain of knowing is killing me more than killing me would kill me, so I jump just to end it.”

— Neal Shusterman

146. “The longer we live, the quicker the days seem to pass. How troublesome that is when we live forever. A year seems to pass in a matter of weeks. Decades fly with no milestones to mark them. We become settled in the inconsequential drudgery of our own lives, until suddenly we look at ourselves in the mirror and see a face we barely recognize begging us to turn a corner and be young again.”

— Neal Shusterman

147. “People are vessels,” Jeri had said to her. “They hold whatever’s poured into them.” And apparently Greyson had drained them and refilled them with something far more palatable.”

— Neal Shusterman

148. “My grandmother used to say that twisting paths always cross again,” he told her. “And whose paths are more twisted than ours?”

— Neal Shusterman

149. “He will only do the wrong thing when it’s the right thing to do...”

— Neal Shusterman

150. “So what happens when your universe begins to get off balance, and you don’t have any experience with bringing it back to center? All you can do is fight a losing battle, waiting for those walls to collapse, and your life to become one huge mystery ashtray.”

— Neal Shusterman