“Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“The fear of not living is a deep, abiding dread of watching your own potential decompose into irredeemable disappointment when 'should be' gets crushed by what is. Sometimes I think it would be easier to die than to face that, because 'what could have been' is much more highly regarded than 'what should have been.' Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“The scariest thing of all is never knowing what you're suddenly going to believe.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“I used to be afraid of dying. Now I’m afraid of not living. There’s a difference. We go through life planning for a future, but sometimes that future never comes.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“And when the abyss looks into you - and it will - may you look back unflinching.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“Forget solar energy—if you could harness denial, it would power the world for generations.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“And you know the darkness beyond despair, just as intimately as you know the soaring heights. Because in this and all universes, there is balance. You can't have the one without facing the other. And sometimes you think you can take it because the joy is worth the despair, and sometimes you know you can't take it and how did you ever think you could?”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“You see demons in the eyes of the world, and the world sees a bottomless pit in yours.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“There are many ways in which the "check brain" light illuminates, but here's the screwed-up part: the driver can't see it. It's like the light is positioned in the backseat cup holder, beneath an empty can of soda that's been there for a month. No one sees it but the passengers—and only if they're really looking for it, or when the light gets so bright and so hot that it melts the can, and sets the whole car on fire.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“It's a curse to see all that might happen but never know what will.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“They all think medicine should be magic, and they become mad at me when it's not.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“The only thing you have for measuring what's real is your mind . . . so what happens when your mind becomes a pathological liar?”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“Everything feels right with the world...
...and the sad thing is that I know it's a dream. I know it must soon end, and when it does I will be thrust awake into a place where either I'm broken, or the world is broken.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“We always look for the signs we missed when something goes wrong. We become like detectives trying to solve a murder, because maybe if we uncover the clues, it gives us some control. Sure, we can’t change what happened, but if we can string together enough clues, we can prove that whatever nightmare has befallen us, we could have stopped it, if only we had been smart enough. I suppose it’s better to believe in our own stupidity than it is to believe that all the clues in the world wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“Nothing awful is without its beautiful side.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“When the truth hurts we always hate the messenger”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“And I think, if thoughts are worth a penny, how much less promises must be worth. Especially the ones you're likely to break.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“What we perceive as art, the universe perceives as directions.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“So what happens when your universe begins to get off balance, and you don’t have any experience with bringing it back to center? All you can do is fight a losing battle, waiting for those walls to collapse, and your life to become one huge mystery ashtray.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“Don Quixote - the famous literary madman - fought windmills. People think he saw giants when he looked at them, but those of us who've been there know the truth. He saw windmills, just like everyone else - but he believed they were giants. The scariest thing of all is never knowing what you're suddenly going to believe.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“There are times I feel like I'm the kid screaming at the bottom of the well, and my dog runs off to pee on trees instead of getting help.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“To name her is to sink her,” he told me. “That which we name takes greater weight than the sea it displaces. Ask any shipwreck.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“You'll find in life, Caden, that many decisions are made by morons in high places.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“I begin to wonder if David was like me. Seeing monsters everywhere and realizing there aren't enough slingshots in the world to get rid of them.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“I still can't figure out if it's bravery or cowardice to take your own life. I can't figure out whether it's being selfish, or selfless. It is the ultimate act of letting go of oneself, or a cheap act of self-possession? People say a failed attempt is a cry for help. I guess that's true if the person meant it to be unsuccessful. But then, I guess most failed attempts aren't entirely sincere, because, let's face it, if you want to off yourself, there are plenty of ways to make sure it works.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“I was using," I tell her. "And God was my drug dealer."
She doesn't get it.
"Tripping on my own brain chemicals. The dope I was doing was already inside.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“I know exactly what he means. I had overheard Poirot talking to my parents. He was using words like "psychosis" and "schizophrenic". Words that people feel they have to whisper, or not repeat at all. The Mental-Illness-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“They want to do something - anything - to help me. Anything to change my situation. But they are as powerless as I am. The two of them are in a lifeboat, together, but so alone. The boat leaks, and they must bail in tandem to keep themselves afloat. It must be exhausting.
The terrible truth of their helplessness is almost too much to bear. I wish I would take them on board, but even if they could reach us, the captain would never allow it.
Right now it sucks to be me - but until now, it never occurred to me that it also sucks to be them.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
“I marveled that people could live so close - that you could literally be surrounded by thousands who were only inches away - and yet be completely isolated. I found it hard to imagine. It's not so hard for me to imagine anymore.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Challenger Deep
Neal Shusterman
Born place: in Brooklyn, New York, The United States
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“stopped.
Well, he'd been stopped.
And the king had been deprived of his most loyal supporter, was suspected of having”
― quote from The Light of Eidon
“The paradoxical intercourse of audience and celebrity.The suppressed awareness that the whole reason ordinary people found celebrity fascinating was that they were not, themselves, celebrities. That wasn't quite it. (....) It was more the deeper, more tragic and universal conflict of which the celebrity paradox was a part. The conflict between the subjective centrality of our own lives versus our awareness of its objective insignificance. Atwater knew - as did everyone at Style, though by some strange unspoken consensus it was never said aloud - that this was the single great informing conflict of the American psyche. The management of insignificance. It was the great syncretic bond of US monoculture. It was everywhere, at the root of everything - of impatience in long lines, of cheating on taxes, of movements in fashion and music and art, of marketing. In particular, he thought it was alive in the paradoxes of audience. It was the feeling that celebrities were your intimate friends, coupled with the inchoate awareness that that untold millions of people felt the same way - and that the celebrities themselves did not. Atwater had had contact with a certain number of celebrities (there was no way to avoid it at BSG), and they were not, in his experience, very friendly or considerate people. Which made sense when one considered that celebrities were not actually functioning as real people at all, but as something more like symbols of themselves.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from Oblivion
“Why do I think these particular books have been popular? Two reasons. First, I think it is because they involve no harsh, garish violence at all. They involve game playing, really. No one is burned or cut or hurt. Certainly no one is killed. Indeed the whole sadomasochistic predicament is presented as a glorified game played out in luxurious rooms and with very attractive people, and involving very attractive slaves. There are endless motifs offered for dominance and submission, for surrender and love. It’s like a theme park of dominance and submission, a place to go to enjoy the fantasy of being overpowered by a beautiful man or woman and delightfully compelled to surrender and feel keening pleasure, without the slightest serious harm. I think it’s authentic to the way many who share this kind of fantasy really feel. I think what makes it work for people is the combination of the very graphic and unsparing sexual details mixed with the elegant fairy-tale world. Unfortunately a lot of hackwork pornography is written by those who don’t share the fantasy, and they slip into hideous violence and ugliness, thinking the market wants all that, when the market never really did. Second, this is shamelessly erotic. It pulls no punches at being what it is. It’s excessive and it is erotica. Before these books, a lot of women read what were called “women’s romances” where they had to mark the few “hot pages” in the book. I said, well, look, try this. Maybe this is what you really want, and you don’t have to mark the hot pages because every page is hot. Every page is about sexual fulfillment. Every page is meant to give you pleasure. There are no boring parts. Yet it’s very “romantic.” And well, I think this worked.”
― quote from The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
“Does man not face life with a greater assurance is he believes that a benevolent providence foresees the future? And yet he must at the same time be confident that his will is free, otherwise moral support is meaningless altogether. Doctrines in themselves are not important to me, but their consequences are. For example, I urge upon men that they regard themselves as embodiments of the divine essence. If I convince them, their days are endowed with a sense of abiding significance and unturning glory. Then not all the misfortunes and degradations to which they may be subjected can take from them their feelings of oneness with angels and stars. And as for our people, persecuted and dispersed, they live under the shadow of death, cherishing a dream that is recurrently shattered by the caprice of tyrants and then dreamed again half in despair. What can enable such a people to persist except a conviction of a special relationship to God?”
― quote from As a Driven Leaf
“Hypotheses non fingo (Latin for "I feign no hypotheses", "I frame no hypotheses", or "I contrive no hypotheses")”
― Isaac Newton, quote from The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
The Tough Guide to F...
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The Picture of Doria...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.
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