Top 500 Neal Shusterman Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 8 of 10

351. “Beautiful is dangerous.”

— Neal Shusterman

352. “Why would anyone in their right mind want to be a teenager more than once? When.”

— Neal Shusterman

353. “I feel everything,” Calliope tells me as I rest in her metallic arms one night, suspended above an easy sea. “I feel not only the sails, but the hull. Not only the ship, but the sea. Not only the sea, but the sky. And not only the sky, but the stars. I feel everything.”

— Neal Shusterman

354. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

355. “It’s more than that now. I can’t tell the difference between what’s part of me and what’s not.”

— Neal Shusterman

356. “They conformed so closely to their culture of nonconformity that there was a uniformity to them, defeating the whole purpose.”

— Neal Shusterman

357. “This game’s stupid,” said Lief. “Who the heck is Zelda, anyway?”

— Neal Shusterman

358. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

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

— Neal Shusterman

360. “The mall was a mecca for a newborn street rat.”

— Neal Shusterman

361. “The dead have nothing left to them but a silent faith in that unknowable infinity – even if theirs is a belief that nothing waits but an infinity of infinities. Because believing in nothing is still believing in something – and only by reaching eternity will anyone know the truth of it all.”

— Neal Shusterman

362. “The fact that it was not human meant that it could never understand certain things, in spite of its immense empathy and intellect. It couldn’t comprehend, for instance, that the terror of the unknown was just as awful, and just as real, regardless of whether or not there was truly something to fear.”

— Neal Shusterman

363. “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?”

— Neal Shusterman

364. “Did Constantine actually just say that? Hell would be freezing over if the Thunderhead weren’t controlling its weather.”

— Neal Shusterman

365. “What we perceive as art, the universe perceives as directions.”

— Neal Shusterman

366. “If I exist without form – a soul sparking between a billion different servers – could not the universe itself be alive with a spirit sparking between stars? I must sheepishly admit that I have dedicated far too many algorithms and computational resources toward finding an answer to this unknowable thing. – The Thunderhead.”

— Neal Shusterman

367. “What do you do with a textbook case when no one’s written the textbook?”

— Neal Shusterman

368. “All his life there was only one thing Lec was allowed to believe. It had surrounded him, cocooned him, constricted him with the same stifling softness as the layers of insulation around him now. For the first time in his life, Lev feels those bounds around his soul begin to loosen.”

— Neal Shusterman

369. “I am lost in every possible way-Lev.”

— Neal Shusterman

370. “Then they pull onto Route 66, heading east into a world that’s ripe for saving.”

— Neal Shusterman

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

— Neal Shusterman

372. “We are not the enemy,” he says. “That’s what the enemy always says.”

— Neal Shusterman

373. “You’ll find in life, Caden, that many decisions are made by morons in high places.”

— Neal Shusterman

374. “Wars are often waged not because of what we believe, but because of the things we want others to believe.”

— Neal Shusterman

375. “I shouldn’t be here,” I appeal to the captain, wondering if I’ve told him this before. “I have midterms and papers due and dirty clothes I never picked up from my bedroom floor, and I have friends, lots of friends.”

— Neal Shusterman

376. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

377. “He put the ring away, and Rowan let out his breath, not even realizing he had been holding it.”

— Neal Shusterman

378. “But it’s not going to happen today – and there is a deep, abiding comfort in that. Deep enough to carry me through till tomorrow.”

— Neal Shusterman

379. “We are not just AWOLS! We are not just parts! We are whole human beings-and history will look back on these times in shame!”

— Neal Shusterman

380. “Nothing stays wondrous forever. It’s human nature to grow accustomed to that which becomes normal, even if it’s a new shade of normal.”

— Neal Shusterman

381. “We all need a moratorium on misery now and then.”

— Neal Shusterman

382. “Truth can only be served from a scalding kettle; whether you blister or make tea is up to you.”

— Neal Shusterman

383. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

384. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

385. “When, she wonders, did she stop being a child? The law says it was when she turned eighteen, but the law doesn’t know her.”

— Neal Shusterman

386. “You’ve got questions coming out of you like farts on Thanksgiving.”

— Neal Shusterman

387. “There’s a quickening of her heart when she sees him. She tells herself it’s anger.”

— Neal Shusterman

388. “Our bodies form a symbol, I think, as powerful as one of Hal’s – and it occurs to me that the most meaningful symbols of all must be based on all the different ways two people can embrace.”

— Neal Shusterman

389. “If love of money is the root of all evil, then having money is the root of all boredom. When you can have everything, you find there’s nothing you really want. When you can do anything, you find there’s nothing you really care to do. You become lazy. Life feels like a boulder you don’t want to lift.”

— Neal Shusterman

390. “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.”

— Neal Shusterman

391. “I guess once you start parting with all the things you think hold your life together, it’s hard to stop – and then you find out your life holds together all by itself.”

— Neal Shusterman

392. “You never realize the holes a person leaves behind until you fall into them.”

— Neal Shusterman

393. “Cuando uno no puede ganar, lo mejor es que haga un chiste de la derrota.”

— Neal Shusterman

394. “What’s the point of living forever if you can’t take a few risks?”

— Neal Shusterman

395. “My artwork isn’t evolving, it’s deconstructing, and I don’t know why.”

— Neal Shusterman

396. “But Morrison put up his hands in instant surrender. “Leave me out of this,” he said. “I’m not going up against Scythe Anastasia.”

— Neal Shusterman

397. “I am what you made me.”

— Neal Shusterman

398. “Genius serves no one if it never makes it out of your head.”

— Neal Shusterman

399. “Each day the sea is exactly the same. We seem no closer, and no farther from anything.”

— Neal Shusterman

400. “I ain’t no runaway, I’m a run-to.”

— Neal Shusterman