Top 500 Neal Shusterman Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “Mitch’s father’s exclusive gated community had an extensive guard gate. In fact, it had two. It also had an electrified fence. And towers with armed guards. All things considered, few gated communities could be more exclusive than the Colorado State Penitentiary.”

— Neal Shusterman

402. “How strange to actually have to see the path of your journey in order to make it.”

— Neal Shusterman

403. “Some things simply made a person feel feminine; other things made a person feel masculine. Wasn’t that true of everyone regardless of gender? Or did binaries deny themselves the things that didn’t fit the mold? Well, regardless, Jerico found the faux pas and overcompensations more humorous than anything else.”

— Neal Shusterman

404. “What was friendship if it isn’t some kind of love?”

— Neal Shusterman

405. “It is the nature of life to fear its own end. This is how I know that we are truly alive.”

— Neal Shusterman

406. “Her eyes are open and her mind is somewhere else.”

— Neal Shusterman

407. “The ending of human life used to be in the hands of nature. But we stole it. Now we have a monopoly on death. We are its sole distributor.”

— Neal Shusterman

408. “You’ll feel a tingling in your chest,” says a surgeon. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

— Neal Shusterman

409. “Can’t you see? I don’t get to do ANYTHING I want! Because I’m too busy just trying to stay alive. And you come here with your fancy school uniform and your mother’s jewelry and your neighbor’s freaking car, and you think you can buy your way in? What kind of idiot buys his way into the bottom?”

— Neal Shusterman

410. “Well, this place was not purgatory, Nirvana, or any sort of rebirth, and it occurred to Nick that regardless of what people believed, the universe had its own ideas.”

— Neal Shusterman

411. “Sigils, as I recall from some dark comic book series, are symbols of medieval magic from back in the day when so few people were literate that literacy itself was seen as borderline magical. A man who could read was considered a genius. A man who could read without moving his lips was proclaimed either divine or demonic, depending on the agenda of whoever was doing the proclaiming.”

— Neal Shusterman

412. “All he ever wanted was a comfortable chair and a place in history. Well, he was robbed of one and died in the other.”

— Neal Shusterman

413. “Sometimes we make our alliances not by the shape and color of our flesh but by the convictions of our heart.”

— Neal Shusterman

414. “Lord, if what I’m doing is wrong, then by all means strike me down. Otherwise set me free.”

— Neal Shusterman

415. “Do not give in to the urge to extinguish oneself in the waters of the world, but instead be a light above those waters to help guide the way.”

— Neal Shusterman

416. “I’m leaping off a cliff only to discover I can fly... and then realizing there’s nowhere to land. Ever. That’s what’s going on.”

— Neal Shusterman

417. “We make mistakes. Believe me, if Goddard is installed as High Blade, half of the scythes who put him there will regret it in the morning, but by then it will be too late!”

— Neal Shusterman

418. “The exploration of possibility has always been the realm of science. The true scientist leave practical application to others.”

— Neal Shusterman

419. “The building was no warmer than the street outside, and it smelled like something died in there from smelling something else that died in there.”

— Neal Shusterman

420. “Good in Crisis; Sucks at Normal.’ That about sums up my whole life, doesn’t it?”

— Neal Shusterman

421. “You should learn to relish the hunger more than the feast, lest you become a glutton.”

— Neal Shusterman

422. “And I think, if thoughts are worth a penny, how much less promises must be worth. Especially the ones you’re likely to break.”

— Neal Shusterman

423. “Good thing about bad rubbish is you can make the stench go away just by covering it up. It never comes back as long as you keep a tight lid on it.”

— Neal Shusterman

424. “People prophesized doom at the hands of a soulless machine. But apparently the machine had a purer soul than any human. It watched the world from millions of eyes, listened from millions of ears. I either acted, or chose not to act on, the countless things it perceived.”

— Neal Shusterman

425. “But we People of Chance do believe in people of second chance.”

— Neal Shusterman

426. “Suddenly it was obvious to Connor why they don’t teach it. Once education was restructured and corporatized, they didn’t want kids knowing how close they came to toppling the government. They didn’t want kids to know how much power they really had.”

— Neal Shusterman

427. “The harder you scrutinize randomness,” Faraday declared, “the more coincidence seems like a design.”

— Neal Shusterman

428. “It’s strange how we always want other people to feel what we feel. It must be a basic human drive. Misery loves company, right? Or when you see a movie that you love, don’t you want to drag all your friends to see it as well? Because it’s only good the second time if it’s the first time for somebody else – as if their experience somehow resonates inside of you. The power of shared experiences. Maybe it’s a way to remind ourselves that on some level we’re all connected.”

— Neal Shusterman

429. “Rowan grinned. “Come now, Your Excellency, there hasn’t been a terrorist in hundreds of years. I’m just a janitor cleaning filth from dark corners.”

— Neal Shusterman

430. “Many believe that the Thunder refers to a collection of human knowledge-perhaps with mechanical arms for the rapid turning of pages. A library of thought, if you will, roaring into consciousness after the arrival of the Toll on Earth, much like thunder follows lightning.”

— Neal Shusterman

431. “The homes here are almost identical, but not quite, full of people almost identical, but not quite.”

— Neal Shusterman

432. “Perhaps the universe should have deigned to provide such warnings, but scythes were no more supernatural than tax collectors in the grand scheme of things. They showed up, did their unpleasant business, and were gone.”

— Neal Shusterman

433. “Suddenly, Tara’s accomplishment was clear. She had lined up allies among the school’s various groups and got them all to work together for probably the first time in the school’s history. She was like a master builder who could bend materials like stone and steel and clay to her will... except her materials were flesh and spirit.”

— Neal Shusterman

434. “Sometimes there are moments when we objectively face the never, and it overwhelms us.”

— Neal Shusterman

435. “Can I throw you under a truck some other time.”

— Neal Shusterman

436. “It was at that moment he realized that his spirit was truly human once more. For he no longer remembered how to be alone without being lonely.”

— Neal Shusterman

437. “There are few things he can stand less than a bunch of morons standing around looking at something that doesn’t work and wondering who’s going to fix it.”

— Neal Shusterman

438. “It’s a big question. Where do you begin to change the world?”

— Neal Shusterman

439. “Incredible. It never ceases to amaze Starkey how far society will go to protect the children it loves and to discard the ones it doesn’t.”

— Neal Shusterman

440. “Instead of ignoring me, Frankie was suddenly noticing every little thing I did, wondering why I did it. Christina started asking me questions about things, like I was the smarter brother. Dad was now confiding in me about things that were really none of my business, and Mom started treating me like I was actually a responsible human being. It was all very disturbing.”

— Neal Shusterman

441. “We’re roughage,” Tyger said. “If we don’t cause a little intestinal distress, no one knows we’re there.”

— Neal Shusterman

442. “But just because we have the ability to label it, doesn’t mean we really know what’s in the box.”

— Neal Shusterman

443. “What’s that expression? The devil you know is better than the one you don’t?”

— Neal Shusterman

444. “The result leaves my brain somewhere in orbit beyond Saturn, where it can’t bother anyone, especially me.”

— Neal Shusterman

445. “Wasn’t that the greatest perk of a perfect world? That there were no limits to what a person could do or become?”

— Neal Shusterman

446. “There are some things I don’t understand, and don’t think I ever will. I don’t understand how a person can give up so totally and completely that they dive right into the heart of a black hole... And I don’t understand how pride can be more important than love.”

— Neal Shusterman

447. “A scythe doesn’t have to follow through on a threat for it to be effective.”

— Neal Shusterman

448. “First rule of motherhood, dearie: men are screw-ups. Learn it now and you’ll be a whole lot happier.”

— Neal Shusterman

449. “Even though the whole world had slid of its axis. Breakfast was breakfast. How dare it be?”

— Neal Shusterman

450. “I have to realize that there are only two perfect acts. They are the two most important acts known to me, but I forbid myself to perform them, and leave them in the hands of humankind. They are the creation of life... and life’s taking.”

— Neal Shusterman