Neal Shusterman

“And so, as the mob backs away to give them space... as the riot police holster their weapons, standing down, and as Risa takes the podium, calming the crowd with a voice as soothing as a sonata, Connor Lassiter holds his family like he'll never let them go.”

“My fans have always been so supportive, and several years ago, I realized that I could thank them by naming all my characters after my Twitter and Facebook fans.”

“Which side was I on? There was no time to search for answers. All I could do now was ride on a werewolf's back, toward a destiny as hidden as the dark side of the moon.”

“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.”

“while it’s five in the morning here, it’s also five in the evening somewhere in China—proving that incompatible truths make perfect sense when seen with global perspective.”

“Today he failed to change the world. As for tomorrow, who can tell?”

“It made my blood boil so hot, my brain stopped working right.”

“...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?”

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

“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.”

“Sometimes the darkness beyond is not glorious at all, it truly is an absolute absence of light. A clawing, needy tar that pulls you down. You drown but you don't. It turns you to lead so you sink faster in its viscous embrace. It robs you of hope and even the memory of hope. It makes you think you've always felt like this, and there's no place to go but down, where it slowly, ravenously digests your will, distilling it into the ebony crude of nightmares. And you know the darkness beyond despair, just as intimately as you know the soaring heights. Because in this and all universes, there is balance. You can't have the one without facing the other. And sometimes you think you can take it because the joy is worth the despair, and sometimes you know you can't take it and how did you ever think you could? And there is the dance; strength and weakness, confidence and desolation.”

“Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.”

“Luck, however, is too dumb to remain consistent”

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

“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.”

“It does, Tennyson, because there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. There’s a fine line between being assertive and being a bully. And you’re on the wrong side of both lines.”

“If someone had told Allie that she would commit a premeditated act of murder, she would not have believed it. She would have spouted off all the reasons how she could never be capable of such a thing—that no matter how dire the circumstances, she would find a better way. She was so naive, so arrogant to think that the laws of necessity and unthinkable circumstance could not apply to her. She could tell herself that this was an act of mercy, but that would be a lie. This was an act of war. An act of terrorism. It was nothing less than an assassination.If I do this, Allie told herself, I am no better than Mary. I will have sunk to the worst possible place a person can go. After this moment, I will be a cold-blooded killer and it can never be taken back.So the question was, did Allie Johnson have the strength to sacrifice all that was left of her innocence if it meant she might save the world?”

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

“Dreams can twist your emotions like no reality can.”

“I wrote Unwind for lots of reasons, and it poses questions about alot of subjects. To state it briefly, I wanted to point out how when peopletake intractable positions on an issue, and stick to extreme sides,sometimes the result is a compromise that is worse than either extreme. Imeant it as a wake up call to society -- and to point out that sometimes theproblem IS that we take sides on an issue, when a different sort of approachis needed. It's also to pose questions about what it means to be alive.Where does life begin, where does it end -- and point out that there is nosingle answer to these questions. The problem is people who think there aresimple answers. People who see things as simple black-and-whiteright-and-wrong are the type of people who will end up with a world like theworld in Unwind.”