Scott Westerfeld Quotes

Dess shook her head. "Before he walked off, Rex said for you to wait. He said it's totally important you don't touch Angie until he comes back. and he said that if you were a pain about it, I get to hit you with that." She pointed to where the darkling had flung Flabbergasted Supernumerary Mathematician, its tip blackened by ichor and fire. "So, go ahead.

The war will end one day. Wars always do.

As one does a bear riding a bicycle. One sees it so rarely.
(Spoken by Volger, on Deryn)

Maybe the trick was not to panic. In life, as in the bewildering business of writing stories and flinging them out into the world, you had to focus on the page in front of you.

MOST THINGS DON'T HAPPEN

Not everything made you stronger. It was possible to survive, yet still be crippled for your trouble. Sometimes it was okay to run away, to skip the test, to chicken out. Or at least to get some help.

Maybe they didn't want you to realize that every civilization has its weakness. There's always one thing we depend on. And if someone takes it away all that's left is some story in a history class.

Once there was a girl named Riley, the story began. Her heart was a secret garden, its stone walls cracked and weathered. And it was hungry. p160

Oh, this beast? It's ... perspicacious loris. 'Perspicacious' meaning 'wise or canny'."
"Get stuffed," Bovril said, then giggled.
"And it insults people," Telsa said. "How peculiar.

Frighteningly Beautiful, Dangerously Strong, Breathtakingly Fast.
Face it Tally-wa you're special ...

Being an author sucks, doesn't it? It's like telling a joke and nobody laughs for two years.

Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image.

I stayed against the back wall, as far away as I could get. Not just to stay away from the Plague Lady but to be farther away from the weird old dolls that lined the shelves of her office. Real-looking hair sprouted from their crumbling heads and all their faces were painted with smiles. Kids in the old days must have loved nightmares or something.

I have no problem with commenters stating strong opinions, except for my usual annoyance with people who don't agree with me.

There was a species of middle pretty who smiled at everything: happy smile, disappointed smile, you're-in-trouble smile.

She needed Andrew Simpson Smith, it was that simple. And he had spent his life training to help people like her. Gods.
"Okay, Andrew. But let's leave today. I'm in a hurry."
"Of course. Today." He stroked the place where his slight beard was beginning to grow. "These ruins where your friends are waiting? Where are they?"
Tally glances up at the sun, still low enough to indicate the eastern horizon. After a moment's calculation, she pointed off to the northwest, back toward the city and beyond that, the Rusty Ruins. "About a week's walk that way."
"A week?"
"That means seven days."
"Yes, I know the gods' calendar," he said huffily. "But a whole week?"
"Yeah. That's not so far, is it?" The hunters had been tireless on their march the night before.
He shook his head, an awed expression on his face. "But that is beyond the edge of the world.

Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart.

Hoverboarding looks so fun, like being a bird. But actually doing it is hard work."
Shay shrugged. "Being a bird's probably hard work too. Flapping your wings all day, you know?

Nate liked money. It was a sleek and clever invention, beautiful in the way it lubricated power and focused people's attention. But it had a clumsy, brutal side, too. Money bludgeoned people without it into silence, shut them away in neighborhoods like this.

You see, freedom has a way of destroying things.

We needed to become world-famous soon, while there was still that kind of world to be famous in ...

He turned to face her again, his late-pretty composure crumbling. "But you're ... "
"Pretty? Think again." She smiled. "I'm Tally Youngbood. My mind is very ugly. And I'm taking your car.

Suddenly a pair of searchlights lanced out from the frigate. They swept across the dark expanse - bright knives slicing the night into pieces.

It's not the traveling that takes courage Tally. I've done much longer trips on my own. It's leaving home.

But it's always taking a risk, when you ... kiss someone new.

That was one problem with dramatic exits: Sometimes they wound up making you look like a bubblehead.

I make it a policy never to appear surprised - Dr Barlow

Apparently textbooks were an endangered species here in Bixby, Oklahoma.

I'm not sure what I am anymore... Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me―a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures... That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed.

The guy walking past was wearing a shit five sizes too big (innovated by gangbangers to hide guns in their waistbands), shorts down below his knees (innovated by surfers to keep their thighs from getting sunburned), and oversized shoes (innovated by skaters to save their feet from injury).

I go where the lizards tell me.

She'd never have to cut herself again. She carries a knife inside herself now, one that was always cutting her. She could feel it every time she swallowed, every time her thoughts strayed.

History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep.

As a bio major, I figured "free will" meant chemicals in your brain telling you what to do, the molecules bouncing around in a way that felt like choosing but was actually the dance of little gears
neurons and hormones bubbling up into decisions like clockwork. You don't use your body; it uses you.

You should make sure that the quotable lines of dialogue in your book never exceed a hundred and forty characters! seemed

You young things are too easily persuaded by the touch of lips.

Making ourselves feel ugly is not fun."
"We are ugly.

What if destiny doesn't care?

My protag likes to play with matches. Then she finds out she doesn't need the matches.'
"I would totally totally TBR that," Sagan said.

The world needed more fireworks- especially now that there was going to be a shortage of beautiful, useless things.

Maybe that was why she was helping Madeleine. She was a manipulative bitch, but Dess couldn't imagine living in any other reality than the one those manipulations had created. In a way, Dess owed the old mindcaster something.
Like her life, such as it was.

Maybe they're not as mindless as we thought, or so dedicated to turning every last human into one of them. Like Kalyn says, they were just bored, waiting for something better to happen.
And that better thing is us.

That letter was your whole future, you daft prince."
"It was my past. I lost that the night my parents died. But I found you, Deryn. Maybe I wasn't meant to end the war, but I was meant to find you. I know that. You've saved me from having any reason to keep going."
"We save each other. That's how it works.

You're insane!" she shouted.
"Pretty cool, huh?"
"No!"Tally yelled. "Why didn't you tell me it was broken?"
Shay shrugged. "More fun that way?"
"More fun?" Her heart beating fast,her vision strangely clear. She was full of anger and relief and ... joy.
"Well, kind of. But you suck!

"Pretty cool," title="Scott Westerfeld Quotes: You're insane!" she shouted.
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Plot idea: 97% of the world's scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.

Right, and things were so great back when everyone was ugly. Or did you miss that day in school?" "Yeah, yeah, I know," Shay recited. "Everyone judged everyone else based on their appearance. People who were taller got better jobs, and people even voted for some politicians just because they weren't quite as ugly as everybody else. Blah, blah, blah." "Yeah, and people killed one another over stuff like having different skin color." Tally shook her head. No matter how many times they repeated it at school, she'd never really quite believed that one. "So what if people look more alike now? It's the only way to make people equal.

Mindy had explained that a lot of things had ghosts, not just people. Animals, machines, even things as vast as a paved-over forest or as humble as the smell of good cooking could leave traces of themselves behind. The world was haunted by the past.

You have a bad habit of listing anything that can go wrong, Volger."
"I have always considered that a good habit

Lilt pulled away. "I saw what he was doing, so I cleared a path for him. I helped him do it ... " She shook her head, tears tracking the dust off her face, and turned to stare at the fallen tower. "Have we all gone mad to want this?

There was something magic in their large perfect eyes, something that made you pay attention

Dare to ask, "Where is my novel too simple?"

I moved to New York when I was 21 or 22 as a graduate fellow.

Bubbly is bogus.

Her parents didn't understand that braille meant big clunky books that marked you as different, while audiobooks live invisibly on your phone and text-to-speech gave you the whole damn internet.

Sooner or later usually means too late

The Shrink always warned me that carriers stay wracked with lifelong guilt. It's not an uplifting thing having turned lovers into monsters. We feel bad that we haven't turned into monsters ourselves
survivor's guilt, that's called. And we feel a bit stupid that we didn't notice our own symptoms earlier. I mean, I'd been sort of wondering why the Atkins diet was giving me night vision. But that hadn't seemed like something to worry about ...

One of the most common questions writers are asked is "Where do you get your ideas?" But the sad truth is, we don't know. Ideas can come at any time and from any direction: in the shower, waiting for an elevator, or while bouncing across Wikipedia pages.

If they were meant to really be together, why had they been born a prince and a commoner? And if they weren't, why did she feel this way inside?

Alek said, "Do you think I'm being a fool?"
"I think you're trying to do something good. But doing good is rarely easy, and no weapon has ever stopped a war.

Freedom's easy to lose and hard to get back.

Sleep is a little slice of death.

The scent of a faraway place lay on my skin.

You just took on five million years of evolution again

Ignorance doesn't lead to salvation, nor does knowledge pave the way to sin. - Cinda Williams Chima

What about a hoverboard?"
"It's waiting on the roof, of course." Dr. Cable snorted. "What is it about you miscreants and those things?

"It's waiting" title="Scott Westerfeld Quotes: What about a hoverboard?"
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Two weeks of killer sunburn is worth a lifetime of being gorgeous

Deryn put her own arms around herself, but it didn't feel the same.
"Barking spiders," she muttered softly,

I wouldn't say design has become strictly functional. A lot of cars these days look downright comic book to me, and the info-gadgets with which late industrial people spend the most time - phones, music players, etc. - are blobjects.

And you know, these things don't last forever.'
I know, Mandy. Nothing does.'
That's the spirit.

Humanity is a disease, a cancer on the body of the world.

Haven't you ever known someone rejected by a lover, who, consumed by rage and jealousy, never lets go? They look on from a distance, unseen but boiling inside. The emotion never seems to tire, this hatred mixed with intense obsession, even with a kind of twisted love.

The whole idea that he could take what he wanted without affecting anyone was bull****.

We're not freaks, Tally. We're normal. We may not be gorgeous, but at least we're not hyped-up Barbie dolls.

It's just been a long week, that's all." "It's monday night, Jess." "My point exactly.

I kissed him once," she whispered.
"Well done. What did he do?"
"Um ... " Deryn sighed. "He woke up.

He took his own saber by the blade and handed it to Alek, pommel first, as if offering it to a victor.

your not alone, Tally. Don't pretend you are

She had changed the arc of her own story, merely by typing a couple of thousand words each day for thirty days.

What a waste, using her talents this way. Like a brain surgeon clubbing seals for a living.

This is life. Right here in this room, with you, is life.

When you get your author's photo taken, be sure not to touch your face." "Why would I do that?" "It's a mystery, but quite common. You must have seen this one." Oscar struck a brooding pose, his fist beneath his chin. "For the author whose brain is too heavy to stay up on its own.

Where did you get that idea for a nose?
- Frizz Mizuno

When she awoke, the world was on fire.

At least one thing was consistent about her life: It just kept on getting more complicated.

This is the power of the Goliath, that no one on earth, Clanker or Darwinist, can escape. So we all must learn to share the globe, or perish together!

You look beautiful - David

Maybe he really could see past her ugly face. Maybe what was inside her did matter to him more than anything else. Tally

You're a bum-rag covered in clart!

You fiddle lucker!' she cried.

Listen, you bubblehead-up-until-five-minutes-ago ...

He shook with another sob, sinking to one knee and realizing that the survival of that one ship – one girl, really – had been for a moment more important than the war itself, or a city's millions. Then the wind shifted, and Alek breathed in the burnt-meat smells that filled the room behind him.
Important enough for him to kill a man, it seemed.

I'm Tally Youngblood. Make me pretty. -Tally Youngblood

Be careful with the world , or the next time we meet, it might get ugly.

That Shay was in possesion of hand grenades was a comforting thought showed what kind of night this had become.

So, there was this beautiful princess.
She was locked in a high tower( ... )She was stuck up there( ... )So the only thing was to jump.

A rat called Possible New Strain was sitting under a spaghetti strainer held down with a pile of journalism textbooks, saying rude things in rat-speak.

Probably? So you're asking me to trust my life to steel wool and peanut butter?"
"Poisoned peanut butter."
"Cal, I don't care if it's nuclear peanut butter.

Alek coughed politely, "If I promise to avoid funny business, could you perhaps remove this knife from my throat?

Sometimes it felt like her life was a series of falls from ever-greater heights.

How come you forget English when you swear?