Quotes from Afterworlds

Scott Westerfeld ·  599 pages

Rating: (16.7K votes)


“What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“Being an author sucks, doesn't it? It's like telling a joke and nobody laughs for two years.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“Real life doesn’t have many happy endings. Why shouldn’t books make up the difference?”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“Hiding from the truth was worse than being lied to.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“You don't know what it's like, when your best friend disappears.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds



“You don't think happy endings are stupid anymore?"

"Your question is irrelevant," Imogen said. "This isn't the end.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“The best way to know a city is to eat it.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“Just remember, the things we write, they aren't always really us.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“First love is amazing and wonderful, but a kind of panic underlies it, a sense of not knowing what you're doing.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“Being fathomed was even better than being flattered, it turned out.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds



“Sleep is a little slice of death.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“In a novel you always knew the moment when something Happened, when someone Changed. But real life was full of gradual, piecemeal, continuous transformation. It was full of accidents and undefineables, and things that just happened on their own. The only certainty was 'It's complicated,' whether or not unicorns tolerated your touch.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“...but loving had left her skinless.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“The universe is math on fire.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“Blurbs don’t work anymore!” was another. “You should make sure that the quotable lines of dialogue in your book never exceed a hundred and forty characters!” seemed at best debatable.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds



“For me, writing's the only thing that's always real. I've never regretted a day I wrote a good scene, whatever else I screwed up that day. That's what's fucking real.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“Adulation is like rain. You can only get so wet.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“Nice concept. But is it a trilogy or a tweet?" "I can't tell any more.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“The scent of a faraway place lay on my skin.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“Looking for a thousand years is worth it, if in the end you find what you need.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds



“Mindy had explained that a lot of things had ghosts, not just people. Animals, machines, even things as vast as a paved-over forest or as humble as the smell of good cooking could leave traces of themselves behind. The world was haunted by the past.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“Maybe that was the point of truth-you could erase it all you wanted, and it was there was to be discovered again.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“Maybe that was the point of truth--you could erase it all you wanted, and it was there to be discovered again”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“More lies, but maybe lies were better than the truth.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“It’s just . . . it feels like someone’s going to ask me for ID. Like, writer ID.” The”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds



“Happy endings are popular. Do you not watch movies?"

"Yeah, but that's movies," Darcy groaned. "Books are above all that!”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“the things we write, they aren’t always really us.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“I'm here to learn. And what you have taught me is to avoid love as long as possible.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“The opening chapter was the book's unique selling point, the singular idea that had carried Darcy through last November, and Coleman had just come up with it off the top of his head.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds


“She would find her answers in the words she wrote, in the stories she told, not by asking for permission.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Afterworlds



Video

About the author

Scott Westerfeld
Born place: in Dallas, Texas, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“human beings are known universally as the only animals capable of lying, and while it is true that they sometimes lie out of fear and sometimes out of self-interest, they also occasionally lie because they realize, just in time, that this is the only means available to them of defending the truth.”
― José Saramago, quote from Seeing


“He cleared his throat, fixing his eyes on the road. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
All the hard edges within me had shimmered and gone soft.
"You said I was beautiful."
He smirked and settled back in his seat. "I guess I did.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from Breaking Point


“Honor is for the living. Dead is dead.”
― Drew Karpyshyn, quote from Path of Destruction


“I don’t think you’re supposed to say ‘fucking’ to kids,” he mumbled. As he passed me, I reached out and smacked him on the back of the head. “Don’t fucking cuss.”
― Aly Martinez, quote from Fighting Silence


“What could he be thinking of? He seemed to be trying to remember something, perhaps an engagement, perhaps an excuse to leave her. For eventually, they all made some excuse.”
― Brian Moore, quote from The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne


Interesting books

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
(11.6K)
The Sailor Who Fell...
by Yukio Mishima
Archangel
(9.1K)
Archangel
by Sharon Shinn
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again:  Essays and Arguments
(28.5K)
A Supposedly Fun Thi...
by David Foster Wallace
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
(66.1K)
In the Heart of the...
by Nathaniel Philbrick
The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45
(56.6K)
The Pianist: The Ext...
by Władysław Szpilman
The Imitation of Christ
(15.8K)
The Imitation of Chr...
by Thomas à Kempis

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.