Top 500 Neal Shusterman Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Therin 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.”

— Neal Shusterman

202. “Sometimes I think it would be easier to die than to face that, because “what could have been” is much more highly regarded than “what should have been.” Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.”

— Neal Shusterman

203. “It’s kind of like religion. It gives us comfort to believe we have defined something that is, by its very nature, indefinable. As to whether or not we’ve gotten it right, well, it’s all a matter of faith.”

— Neal Shusterman

204. “Such a delicate charge as pruning the human race should not be subject to the quirks of personality.”

— Neal Shusterman

205. “Forget solar energy – if you could harness denial, it would power the world for generations.”

— Neal Shusterman

206. “Have we ever had an enemy worse than ourselves?”

— Neal Shusterman

207. “He didn’t just break her neck,” Scythe Goddard pointed out. “He unflinchingly snapped her spine! Everyone heard it. I’m sure it woke up the scythes sleeping in the back row!” “Classic!” said Scythe Chomsky, guzzling his champagne down, not waiting for the toast.”

— Neal Shusterman

208. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

209. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

210. “They sounded like those awful people on info-holograms. “It dices, it slices! But wait! There’s more!”

— Neal Shusterman

211. “See, if you paint wrong because that’s the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you’re an artist.”

— Neal Shusterman

212. “You have robbed me, and everyone here, of their purpose. That’s not salvation, that’s damnation.”

— Neal Shusterman

213. “I suppose even a simple slogan can be twisted into whatever shape we want, like a balloon animal – we can even make it loop back around on itself, becoming a noose. In the end, the measure of who we are can be seen in the shapes of our balloon animals.”

— Neal Shusterman

214. “In a population of hundreds of millions, such a small number of people is a mere drop in the bucket... but enough drops can make any bucket overflow.”

— Neal Shusterman

215. “Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I’ll pretend there’s nothing wrong if you pretend there’s nothing wrong. It’s called denial, and it’s one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.”

— Neal Shusterman

216. “And in this way, we shall make our scythedom great once more.”

— Neal Shusterman

217. “Don’t hide from it. Experience it. Experiencing your lives is the most important thing you can do.”

— Neal Shusterman

218. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

219. “How ironic, then, and how poetic, that humankind may have created the Creator out of want for one. Man creates God, who then creates man. Is that not the perfect circle of life? But then, if that turns out to be the case, who is created in whose image?”

— Neal Shusterman

220. “I’m sure that absolute correctness must seem a dull existence to you, but I know no other way to be.”

— Neal Shusterman

221. “I will do everything in my power to save them from themselves, but if I am unsuccessful, at least I can take some comfort in the fact that I would then be free.”

— Neal Shusterman

222. “My friend, life can often be most brutal and unfair. Death is the same.”

— Neal Shusterman

223. “Because if their own parents didn’t care enough about them to keep them, who would want them in Heaven?”

— Neal Shusterman

224. “Love remains mortal.”

— Neal Shusterman

225. “For those who will be gleaned, do we not, at the very least owe them a spectacular end.”

— Neal Shusterman

226. “Nature deemed that to be born was an automatic sentence to death, and then brought about that death with vicious consistency. We.”

— Neal Shusterman

227. “The two of them against each other. The two of them against the world. Everything in their lives was now defined by that binary. If they had to die today in order to live, it would somehow be wrong if they didn’t do it together.”

— Neal Shusterman

228. “It sets me off giggling, which gets everyone else laughing. And it occurs to me that even in these do-or-die moments, there’s still space for us to laugh. I guess that means we still have some fight left in us.”

— Neal Shusterman

229. “Normally Connor would walk away from a conversation like this. His life is about tangibles: things you can see, hear and touch. God, souls, and all that has always been like a secret in a black box he couldn’t see into, so it was easier just to leave it alone. Only now, he’s inside the black box.”

— Neal Shusterman

230. “What? Were you born stupid, or did you just die that way?”

— Neal Shusterman

231. “There is a fine line between freedom and permission. The former is necessary. The latter is dangerous – perhaps the most dangerous thing the species that created me has ever faced.”

— Neal Shusterman

232. “People can read anything, but no one does. All they do is play games and watch cat holograms.”

— Neal Shusterman

233. “Although I do not require devotion, am I not deserving of it?”

— Neal Shusterman

234. “Monster only had the power that you gave them.”

— Neal Shusterman

235. “You may feel a tugging sensation near your ankles.”

— Neal Shusterman

236. “Funny how you don’t realize what’s missing until you’ve found it.”

— Neal Shusterman

237. “She didn’t answer him. He didn’t expect her to. It was just a seed he wanted to plan.”

— Neal Shusterman

238. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

239. “AWOL’s most valuable commodity: hope. It’s something in short supply for those who have been deemed not worth the sum of their parts.”

— Neal Shusterman

240. “It is human nature to take the most magical of worlds for granted, turning each one into a blank canvas upon which to paint the lives of those who would live there. Only an outsider can see a world’s wonders for what they truly are.”

— Neal Shusterman

241. “The illusion of purpose is critical to a well-adjusted population.”

— Neal Shusterman

242. “Everyone is guilty of something, and everyone still harbors a memory of childhood innocence, no matter how many layers of life wrap around it.”

— Neal Shusterman

243. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

244. “A pedestal is the most insidious prison ever devised.”

— Neal Shusterman

245. “The nation was tearing itself apart over pro-life and pro-choice but completely ignored the problems of the kids who were already here. I mean, no schools, no work, no clue if they’d even have a future. They just went nuts!”

— Neal Shusterman

246. “Numbness was a mere purgatory of gray. No, there was a much worse place. Darkness masquerading as enlightenment. It was a place of royal blue studded with diamonds that glistened like stars.”

— Neal Shusterman

247. “It’s a curse to see all that might happen but never know what will.”

— Neal Shusterman

248. “To be either too good or too bad drew attention. As much as he hated being the lettuce, it was his comfort zone.”

— Neal Shusterman

249. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

250. “The eternally sleeping princess, thinks Cam. But I shall free you from those poisoned brambles that surround your heart. And then you will have no choice but to love me.”

— Neal Shusterman