Scott Westerfeld (b. 1963)

Quotes

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

• Hard work's a good distraction.

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

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

• People only worry about the uncanny for about a week; that's the end of their attention span. After that, suspicions turn into shtick.

• 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

• It doesn't take much convincing to make someone believe they're better than everyone else.

• Freedom has a way of destroying things.

• A little drama wins more friends than boring.

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

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

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

• Money's the same, whoever gives it to you. That was the point of money, after all: crisp and clean or wrinkled or disintegrated into quarters - a dollar was always worth a hundred cents.

• Here's what I've learned about dogs: They're a lot like pretty girls. Having one or two around makes everything more fun, but when you get a whole bunch together, it turns into one big power struggle.

• 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.

• 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.

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

• Maybe kissing is sort of like nature's coffee.

• 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.

• 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.