Scott westerfeld quotes

She looked at David closely, and the feeling was still there. She could see that his forehead was too high, that a small scar cut a white stroke through his eyebrow. And his smile was pretty crooked, really. But it was as if something had changed inside Tally's head, something that had turned his face pretty to her.

Now,young lady,I suppose you're here for a work assignment." Work?" Tally said. They both looked down at her puzzled expression, and Shay burst into laughter.

maybe when you look at your face 50 times its really not that interesting anymore

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

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

Have a little faith in me, Volger." "I have great faith, tempered with vast annoyance.

Life doesn't come with an instruction manual.

I kissed him once," she whispered. "Well done. What did he do?" "Um..." Deryn sighed. "He woke up.

Once we turn, it’s new pretty, middle pretty, late pretty.” Shay dropped her arms, and her board stopped drifting. “Then dead pretty.

The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit. Of course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right.

Dare to ask, "Where is my novel too simple?"

One of the most common questions writers are asked is "Where do you get your ideas?" But the sad truth is, we don't know. Ideas can come at any time and from any direction: in the shower, waiting for an elevator, or while bouncing across Wikipedia pages.

Tally-When you looked around at everyone else how come you didn’t notice they were brain damaged? Az - We didn’t have much to compare our fellow citizens with. Only a few colleagues who seemed different from most people, more engaged, but that was hardly a surprise. History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep. Before the operation there were wars and mass hatred and clear cutting. Whatever these lesions make us, it isn’t a far cry from how humanity was in the rusty era. These days we’re just a bit easier to manage.

Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.

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

Sometimes it felt like her life was a series of falls from ever-greater heights.

I love my virginity to the apocalypse.

A little drama wins more friends than boring.

It didn't matter what you looked like. It was how you carried yourself, how you saw yourself.

You’d best ask the lady boffin, sir,” Newkirk said. “Midshipmen aren’t allowed to have opinions.

Most men's awareness doesn't extend past their dinner plates.

Perhaps Clankers and Darwinists would always be at war, if only in their hearts.

With everything so perfect, reality seemed somehow fragile, as if the slightest interruption could imperil her pretty future... all of it felt as tenuous as a soap bubble, shivering and empty.

Tally sighed, tipping her feet again to follow. "Maybe that's because they have better stuff to do than kid tricks. Maybe partying in town is better than hanging out in a bunch of old ruins." Shay's eyes flashed. "Or maybe when they do the operation-when they grind and stretch your bones to the right shape, peel off your face and rub all your skin away, and stick in plastic cheekbones so you look like everyone else-maybe after going through all that you just aren't very interesting anymore.

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

Making ourselves feel ugly is not fun." "We are ugly.

Sometimes, the hardest thing was doing nothing.

A rousing tale of techno-geek rebellion, as necessary and dangerous as file sharing, free speech, and bottled water on a plane.

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.

You fiddle lucker!' she cried.

you dont see me, now you do, but only if i want you to

You and David could both be right. Maybe human beings are programmed … to help one another, even to fall in love. But just because it's human nature doesn't make it bad, Tally. Besides, we had a whole city of pretties to choose from, and we chose each other."-Zane

so pRetty i hAd to Eat hiM

All that glitters is not hovery.

The Internet is global and seemingly omniscient, while iPods and phones are all microscopic workings encased in plastic blobjects. Compare that to a steam engine, where you can watch the pistons move and feel the heat of its boilers. I think we miss that visceral appeal of the machine.

I used to be a pre-industrial writer: thousands of words in a spurt and then a few days off. But as I get older, I've switched to a mode best described as 'slow and steady wins the race.' Basically, I write during the same four hours every day, after breakfast and the all-important coffee, generally in the same room and wearing the same pajamas.

the parties are no fun until everyone gets drunk

They walked with a pedatory grace.... one of them ripped off their hood and said, "my name is Tally Youngblood and is a special circumstance".

...I want those perfect eyes and lips, and for everyone to look at me and gasp. And for everyone who sees me to think Who's that? and want to get to know me, and listen to what I say." "I'd rather have something to say.

Left alone, human beings are a plague. They multiply relentlessly, consuming every resource, destroying everything they touch.

As a bio major, I figured "free will" meant chemicals in your brain telling you what to do, the molecules bouncing around in a way that felt like choosing but was actually the dance of little gears--neurons and hormones bubbling up into decisions like clockwork. You don't use your body; it uses you.

Did you really think I was too fragile to know what Deryn was?" "Fragile?" Volger looked about. "I hadn't thought so, but now I find you brooding in a bathroom. This doesn't speak well of your sturdiness.

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

I'm not sure what I am anymore... Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me―a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures... That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed.

In a world of extreme beauty, anyone normal is ugly.

Why are you still wearing...?" Aya began. "Oh, that's not smart plastic? You're really an ugly?" David rolled his eyes and Shay said quietly, "David's never had any surge at all. But I wouldn't use the word ugly...Tally might eat you.

You're insane!" she shouted. "Pretty cool, huh?" "No!"Tally yelled. "Why didn't you tell me it was broken?" Shay shrugged. "More fun that way?" "More fun?" Her heart beating fast,her vision strangely clear. She was full of anger and relief and...joy. "Well, kind of. But you suck!

Sometimes the facts in my head get bored and decide to take a walk in my mouth. Frequently this is a bad thing.

Tally turned away. Five minutes was suddenly too long to stand here, eyes burning, unable to cry.

She wasn't here to gawk. She was an infiltrator, a sneak, an ugly. And she had a mission.

What happens when perfection isn't good enough?

Never bored on a hoverboard.

The very idea of making shoes by hand boggled her mind.

I'm Tally Youngblood. Make me pretty." -Tally Youngblood

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.

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.

However stupid the choice seemed, Shay had made it with her eyes open, and had respected Tally's choice to stay.

The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.

He thinks Goliath can end the war," Alek managed at last. "The man wants peace!" "As do we all," Count Volger said. "But there are many ways to end a war. Some are more peaceful than others.

"Clear-cutting" was the word for what the Rusties had done to the old forests: felling every tree, killing every living thing, turning entire countries into grazing land. Whole rain forests had been consumed, reduced from millions of interlocking species to a bunch of cows eating grass, a vast web of life traded for cheap hamburgers. "Look, we're not clear-cutting. All we're doing is pulling out the garbage that the Rusties left behind,” David said. "It just takes a little surgery to do it."

So, there was this beautiful princess. She was locked in a high tower(...)She was stuck up there(...)So the only thing was to jump.

And it was pretty clear that no prince was showing up, or at least that he was really late.

Perhaps it's worth saying again: One reader's discomfort should never stand in the way of another reader's survival.

Luckily for writers - and unluckily for history - every scientific idea creates human conflict.

My name is tally youngblood and my mind is very ugly

there was a beautiful princess with a prince kissing her lips only the prince was totally ugly

Dying is one of those things that can’t be fixed. Not by talking about it, not with all the brain surge in the world.

And over all those sleepy weeks, the dream always ended the same way, with the dragon coming for the princess saying the same words every time.... "Face it, Tally-wa, you're Special.

Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart.

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

Deryn felt brilliant, rising through the air at the center off everyone's attention, like an acrobat aloft on a swing. She wanted to make a speech: Hey, all you sods, I can fly and you can't! A natural airman, in case you haven't noticed. And in conclusion, I'd like to add that I'm a girl and you can all get stuffed!

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.

you just took on five million years of evolution again

The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening, but they choked everything around them.

Let me get this stright, Aya-Chan. You want me, a person who can't lie, to lie about the fact that I can't lie?" -Frizz mizuno

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.

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

The lie took form as she spoke, pulling on as many strands of truth as it could reach.

So what are those balloons for? In case you fall off your hoverboard?' -- Tally to Peris

That Shay was in possesion of hand grenades was a comforting thought showed what kind of night this had become.

There was a species of middle pretty who smiled at everything: happy smile, disappointed smile, you're-in-trouble smile.

Maybe this was how you stayed sane in wartime: a handful of noble deeds amid the chaos.

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.

I’m not against thinking; I’m only against thinking that thinking on its own will get you out of a hole. Shovel also needed.

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

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

It's not the way Zane looks, David," she said, her voice trembling with anger. "It's because he makes me bubbly, and because we took a lot of risks together. It could just as easily be me lying there, and he would stay with me if it was." "It's just programming!" "No. It's because I love him.

Which was worse: a friend with brain damage, or one who despised you?

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

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.

Plot idea: 97% of the world's scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.

He turned to face her again, his late-pretty composure crumbling. "But you're..." "Pretty? Think again." She smiled. "I'm Tally Youngbood. My mind is very ugly. And I'm taking your car.

Maybe that was the price of loving someone: You lost your grasp of where they ended and you began.

Ring around the rosie. A pocket full of posie. Ashes ashes, we all fall down. Some people say that this poem is about the Black Death, the fourteenth-century plague that killed 100-million people... Sadly, though, most experts think this is nonsense... How can I be so sure about this rhyme when all the experts disagree? Because I ate the kid who made it up.

This is the power of the Goliath, that no one on earth, Clanker or Darwinist, can escape. So we all must learn to share the globe, or perish together!

I love you all. But it's time to say good-bye, for now. be careful with the world, or the next time we meet, it might get ugly. -Tally Youngblood

I've learned a lot about stage-managing for illustration. Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image. I've also learned to making big-scale design decisions early.

Having a brain hurt so much sometimes.

You see, freedom has a way of destroying things.

When she awoke, the world was on fire.

Around the outskirts of the city, cut off from town by the black oval of the river, everything was in darkness. Everyone ugly was in bed by now.

Ah. So he's forgotten the most important rule of warfare. Which is... That nothing ever goes to plan.

Dude, I just watched you climb up a f*cking building!-Lace

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

Your personality - the real you inside - was the price of beauty.

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

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

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

Fuzzy Tally is no more.

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

your not alone, Tally. Don't pretend you are

Good books make you ask questions. Bad readers want everything answered.

I spilled more times than a glass of milk on a roller coaster.

And the worst thing was, there were no mirrors out there in the wild, so the princess was left wondering whether she in fact was still beautiful... or if the fall had changed the story completely.

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.

He and I have this... personality conflict. Namely, I think he should get a new one.

Frighteningly Beautiful, Dangerously Strong, Breathtakingly Fast. Face it Tally-wa you're special.

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

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

Didn't this beat everything? A pretty and an ugly taking a stroll together. The warden came closer, confusion all over his middle-pretty face. Tally smiled. At least she was causing trouble to the end. "I'm Tally Youngblood," she said. "Make me pretty.

Sometimes you can’t choose what you love.

I have no formal training as a writer at all, not even a single English class in college.

That was one problem with dramatic exits: Sometimes they wound up making you look like a bubblehead.

Tally smiled. At least she was causing trouble to the end. "I'm Tally Youngblood," she said. "make me pretty.

Dess shook her head. "Before he walked off, Rex said for you to wait. He said it's totally important you don't touch Angie until he comes back. and he said that if you were a pain about it, I get to hit you with that." She pointed to where the darkling had flung Flabbergasted Supernumerary Mathematician, its tip blackened by ichor and fire. "So, go ahead.