Scott Westerfeld Quotes

105 Sourced Quotes

You all say you need us. Well, maybe you do, but not to help, with the millions of bubbly new minds about to be unleashed, with all the cities coming awake at last. Together, you're more than enough to change the world without us. So from now on, David and I are here to stand in your way. You see, freedom has a way of destroying things.

Scott Westerfeld
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.

Scott Westerfeld
Tally, do you ever suffer from sudden flashes of anger or euphoria, countersocial impulses, or feelings of superiority?

Scott Westerfeld
Even mocking people helped their face stats. In the reputation economy, the only real way to hurt anyone was to ignore them completely. And it was pretty hard to ignore someone who made your blood boil.

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

Scott Westerfeld
Becoming pretty doesn't just change the way you look," she said. "No," David said. "It changes the way you think.

Scott Westerfeld
Your father always suspected that being pretty-minded is simply the natural state for most people. They want to be vapid and lazy and vain—Maddy glanced at Tally—and selfish. It only takes a twist to lock in that part of their personalities. He always thought that some people could think their way out of it.

Scott Westerfeld
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.

Scott Westerfeld
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.

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

Scott Westerfeld
Out here, you find out that the city fools you about how things really work.

Scott Westerfeld
Maybe she still was a pretty-head, making up irrational stories about the empty forest. The longer she stayed alone out here, the more Tally understood why the Rusties and their predecessors had believed in invisible beings, praying to placate spirits as they trashed the natural world around them.

Scott Westerfeld
I can't imagine anything worse than being required to have fun.

Scott Westerfeld
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.

Scott Westerfeld
Reality had no gears, and you never knew what surprises would come spinning out of its chaos.

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

Scott Westerfeld
Once we turn, it's new pretty, middle pretty, late pretty. Shay dropped her arms, and her board stopped drifting. Then dead pretty.

Scott Westerfeld
I'm not the one going for a biology degree. I'm just a philosophy major who eats people.

Scott Westerfeld
Surely no one would ever use such a weapon against a city." "There are no limits in war," Volger said, still staring out the window.

Scott Westerfeld
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.

Scott Westerfeld
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.

Scott Westerfeld
But you weren't born expecting that kind of beauty in everyone, all the time. You just got programmed into thinking anything else is ugly.

Scott Westerfeld
The Rusty Ruins were the remains of an old city, a hulking reminder of back when there'd been way too many people, and everyone was incredibly stupid. And ugly.

Scott Westerfeld
Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at least try to grow your own brain.

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

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

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

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

Scott Westerfeld
It's just the way things are." she shrugged. "It's no one's fault." "Or everyone's.

Scott Westerfeld
Turns out if you never lie, there's always someone mad at you.

Scott Westerfeld