Scott Westerfeld Quotes

105 Sourced Quotes

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
Come on, it's almost midnight. Let's go watch them cut the cake.

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 wondered if you could talk somebody out of their brain damage.

Scott Westerfeld
You'd best ask the lady boffin, sir, Newkirk said. Midshipmen aren't allowed to have opinions.

Scott Westerfeld
She couldn't disappoint the whole village. There were no wallscreens here, no newsfeeds or satellites bands, and touring soccer teams were no doubt few and far between. (...), that made stories a valuable commodity, and it probably wasn't very often that a stranger dropped in from the sky.

Scott Westerfeld
She turned to Frizz. "So you understand the problem? You can't let Tally know about Radical Honesty. There's no telling what she'll do if she finds out you could ruin her plans." Frizz's eyebrows rose. "So let me get this straight, Aya-chan. You want me, a person who can't lie, to lie about the fact that I can't lie?" "We need another plan," Hiro said.

Scott Westerfeld
That's how things were out here in the wild, she was learning. Dangerous or beautiful. Or both.

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

Scott Westerfeld
But you know what? It's not my behavior I'm worried about anymore. It's yours.

Scott Westerfeld
That was the whole point of being special: You existed to make sure everyone else behaved, but that didn't mean YOU had to.

Scott Westerfeld
You're infamous, Tally. Everyone's terrified of you. The new system may have made the other cities nervous, but they seem to think my little gang of psychotic sixteen-year-olds is worse" - Cable to Tally

Scott Westerfeld