Scott Westerfeld Quotes

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

She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn't even a pretty one.

What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful.

I'd watched too many schoolmates graduate into mental institutions, into group homes and jails, and I knew that locking people up was paranormal - against normal, not beside it. Locks didn't cure; they strangled.

My name is tally youngblood and my mind is very ugly

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

Tally smiled. At least she was causing trouble to the end. "I'm Tally Youngblood," she said. "make me pretty.

Shay sometimes talked in a mysterious way, like she was quoting the lyrics of some band no one else listened to.

However stupid the choice seemed, Shay had made it with her eyes open, and had respected Tally's choice to stay.

I don't want to hurt you but I will if I have too - Tally Youngblood

I know what it’s like to be manipulated, Aya-la. And I know what it’s like to be in danger. While your city was building you mansions to live in, my friends and I have been protecting this planet. We’ve spilled more blood than you have flowing in your veins. So don’t try to make me feel guilty! -Tally Youngblood, Extras

The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side.

Ring around the rosie. A pocket full of posie. Ashes ashes, we all fall down. Some people say that this poem is about the Black Death, the fourteenth-century plague that killed 100-million people... Sadly, though, most experts think this is nonsense... How can I be so sure about this rhyme when all the experts disagree? Because I ate the kid who made it up.

A rousing tale of techno-geek rebellion, as necessary and dangerous as file sharing, free speech, and bottled water on a plane.

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.

Nature didn't need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.

The lie took form as she spoke, pulling on as many strands of truth as it could reach.

The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening, but they choked everything around them.

You see, freedom has a way of destroying things.

Let others wage war. You, lucky Austria, shall marry.

Gravity was something you could beat; all it took was hydrogen, hot air, or even a bit of rope. But being a girl was a miserable, never-ending struggle.

I go where the lizards tell me.

...I want those perfect eyes and lips, and for everyone to look at me and gasp. And for everyone who sees me to think Who's that? and want to get to know me, and listen to what I say." "I'd rather have something to say.

It's amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.

Most men's awareness doesn't extend past their dinner plates.

Good books make you ask questions. Bad readers want everything answered.

I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth.

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.

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

Maybe this was how you stayed sane in wartime: a handful of noble deeds amid the chaos.

Why are you still wearing...?" Aya began. "Oh, that's not smart plastic? You're really an ugly?" David rolled his eyes and Shay said quietly, "David's never had any surge at all. But I wouldn't use the word ugly...Tally might eat you.

Maybe that was the price of loving someone: You lost your grasp of where they ended and you began.

When she awoke, the world was on fire.

High school wasn't a trial by fire or some ordeal that had to be survived. It was all a big joke. You just had to provide the laugh track.

Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.

In a world of extreme beauty, anyone normal is ugly.

I can’t imagine anything worse than being required to have fun.

A little drama wins more friends than boring.

The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.

Tally sighed, tipping her feet again to follow. "Maybe that's because they have better stuff to do than kid tricks. Maybe partying in town is better than hanging out in a bunch of old ruins." Shay's eyes flashed. "Or maybe when they do the operation-when they grind and stretch your bones to the right shape, peel off your face and rub all your skin away, and stick in plastic cheekbones so you look like everyone else-maybe after going through all that you just aren't very interesting anymore.

Fuzzy Tally is no more.

you dont see me, now you do, but only if i want you to

Sometimes you can’t choose what you love.

The Internet is global and seemingly omniscient, while iPods and phones are all microscopic workings encased in plastic blobjects. Compare that to a steam engine, where you can watch the pistons move and feel the heat of its boilers. I think we miss that visceral appeal of the machine.

She looked at David closely, and the feeling was still there. She could see that his forehead was too high, that a small scar cut a white stroke through his eyebrow. And his smile was pretty crooked, really. But it was as if something had changed inside Tally's head, something that had turned his face pretty to her.

"Clear-cutting" was the word for what the Rusties had done to the old forests: felling every tree, killing every living thing, turning entire countries into grazing land. Whole rain forests had been consumed, reduced from millions of interlocking species to a bunch of cows eating grass, a vast web of life traded for cheap hamburgers. "Look, we're not clear-cutting. All we're doing is pulling out the garbage that the Rusties left behind,” David said. "It just takes a little surgery to do it."

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.

We don't always get to choose what we love.

Junkies might be easy to knock down, but they're never fragile. They have souls like old leather shoes studded with steel, and they're about as much good as friends.

It didn't matter what you looked like. It was how you carried yourself, how you saw yourself.