Neal Shusterman: Thing

“… One thing you learn when you've lived as long as I have-people aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I'm pleased to be in the light.”

“You see, a conflict always begins with an issue - a difference of opinion, an argument. But by the time it turns into a war, the issue doesn't matter anymore, because now it's about one thing and one thing only: how much each side hates the other.”

“Either things happen for a reason, or they happen for no reason at all. Either one's life is a thread in a glorious tapestry or humanity is just a hopelessly tangled knot.”

“The good thing about being explosive is that no one can beat you.”

“How can you do the right thing when you can't figure out what that is? When all you have before you are choices in various shades of wrong?”

“There's ordinary people out there doing extraordinary things.”

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

“The scariest thing of all is never knowing what you're suddenly going to believe.”

“He does not deserve this. He has done many things, not all good, but he does not deserve this. And he never did get his priest.”

“Maybe we're standing like coins on the edge?"
Allie considered this. "Meaning?"
"Meaning, we might be able to shake things up a little, and find a way to come up heads."
"Or tails," suggested Allie.
"What are youabout?" said Lief.
"Life and death.”

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

“When you truly start to care about someone you become vulnerable to all sorts of things.”

“The only thing you have for measuring what's real is your mind… so what happens when your mind becomes a pathological liar?”

“Everything feels right with the world…
… and the sad thing is that I know it's a dream. I know it must soon end, and when it does I will be thrust awake into a place where either I'm broken, or the world is broken.”

“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.”

“The thing was, if I had found a way to escape- even for just a little while- I knew the pain would be there waiting for me when I got back.”

“How can you pass laws about things that nobody knows?"
"They do it all the time," says Hayden. "That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.”

“On a sunny Tuesday - for it seems so many awful things happen on a Tuesday - six astronauts and one schoolteacher attempted to pierce the sky. Instead they touched the stars.”

“Kids are kids. No matter what year it is, no matter what language they speak or culture they’re in. There is something deeply universal about being a teenager, and I try to capture that universality in the things that I write.”