Neal Shusterman
Award-winning author Neal Shusterman grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he began writing at an early age. After spending his junior and senior years of high school at the American School of Mexico City, Neal went on to UC Irvine, where he made his mark on the UCI swim team, and wrote a successful humor column. Within a year of graduating, he had his first book deal, and was hired to write a movie script.
In the years since, Neal has made his mark as a successful novelist, screenwriter, and television writer. As a full-time writer, he claims to be his own hardest task-master, always at work creating new stories to tell. His books have received many awards from organizations such as the International Reading Association, and the American Library Association, as well as garnering a myriad of state and local awards across the country. Neal's talents range from film directing (two short films he directed won him the coveted CINE Golden Eagle Awards) to writing music and stage plays – including book and lyrical contributions to “American Twistory,” which is currently playing in Boston. He has even tried his hand at creating Games, having developed three successful "How to Host a Mystery" game for teens, as well as seven "How to Host a Murder" games.
As a screen and TV writer, Neal has written for the "Goosebumps" and “Animorphs” TV series, and wrote the Disney Channel Original Movie “Pixel Perfect”. Currently Neal is adapting his novel Everlost as a feature film for Universal Studios.
Wherever Neal goes, he quickly earns a reputation as a storyteller and dynamic speaker. Much of his fiction is traceable back to stories he tells to large audiences of children and teenagers -- such as his novel The Eyes of Kid Midas. As a speaker, Neal is in constant demand at schools and conferences. Degrees in both psychology and drama give Neal a unique approach to writing. Neal's novels always deal with topics that appeal to adults as well as teens, weaving true-to-life characters into sensitive and riveting issues, and binding it all together with a unique and entertaining sense of humor.
Of Everlost, School Library Journal wrote: “Shusterman has reimagined what happens after death and questions power and the meaning of charity. While all this is going on, he has also managed to write a rip-roaring adventure…”
Of What Daddy Did, Voice of Youth Advocates wrote; "This is a compelling, spell-binding story... A stunning novel, impossible to put down once begun.
Of The Schwa Was Here, School Library Journal wrote: “Shusterman's characters–reminiscent of those crafted by E. L. Konigsburg and Jerry Spinelli–are infused with the kind of controlled, precocious improbability that magically vivifies the finest children's classics.
Of Scorpion Shards, Publisher's Weekly wrote: "Shusterman takes an outlandish comic-book concept, and, through the sheer audacity and breadth of his imagination makes it stunningly believable. A spellbinder."
And of The Eyes of Kid Midas, The Midwest Book Review wrote "This wins our vote as one of the best young-adult titles of the year" and was called "Inspired and hypnotically readable" by School Library Journal.
Neal Shusterman lives in Southern California with his children Brendan, Jarrod, Joelle, and Erin, who are a constant source of inspiration!
“You don’t just go to somebody and say, ‘I’m a better person because you’re in my head.”
“That's legally blind, I'm not legally blind" "Yes, she's illegally blind”
“The best you can really hope for is a family where everyone's problems, big and small, work together. Kind of like an orchestra where every instrument is out of tune, in exactly the same way, so you don't really notice”
“Ghost implies a whole lot of things that I am NOT. Do I look like Casper to you?""Fine," said Nick. "We're not ghosts, we're Undefined Spectral Doohickies. USDs. Are you happy now?”
“It can be said, then, that Everlost is heaven...for the places that deserve a share of forever. Such places are few and far between...The greatest of these stood near Manhattan's southern-most tip: the two gray brothers to the green statue in the bay. The towers had found their heaven...held fast, and held forever by the memories of a mourning world, and by the dignity of the souls who got where they were going on that dark September day.”
“Milestone! This is a momentous occasion," he tells her cheerily. "It should be witnessed by a friend." She throws him an icy gaze, and he does a verbal back pedal. "Aaaand since no friends are present, I'll have to do.”
“Truth is truth. Implications are subjective. People will hear your words and draw their own conclusion.”
“It was easy to deal with being invisible, but being noticed―that was something entirely different.”
“I still don't know much about art, but I do know that there are places inside of us―palaces of glorious light and caverns of unknowable darkness. Magical places filled with brilliant, unimaginable colors that we suffer to bring forth.”
“I suppose there are three kinds of people in this world. Some people live their lives around the holes―never finding them, never even worrying about them. Their lives are full and happy. Then there are others who keep falling through those hidden gaps, into nightmares they never knew existed. I wouldn't want to be one of them. And then there's a few...restless people who spend our lives plugging holes in the unfinished corners of creation and building walls to hold back all the things that must never be seen. Perhaps there's more holes than can be patched in a lifetime. But I've got to live on the hope that maybe, just maybe, we'll get them all...and the abyss will never look into us again.”
“I came running down the stairs that morning, like it was Christmas. My parents were already up. In my family, presents never waited; they were there upon waking. Our family has a problem with what they called delayed gratification. We want what we want when we want it, and we always want it now.”
“There are worse things than being robbed..." I could smell the sick old-meat stench on his breath, like he really had eaten my grandmother. "...worse things than dyin' even. You be a good boy, Little Red, and maybe you'll get to live awhile. Maybe you'll get to die in your own natural time.”
“Man, Grandma, what big hair you have.""The better to style with, my dear.”
“Did you ever get the feeling that everything was too perfect? Like the moment was so good that something had to be wrong? Kind of like the way a fish sees that bright, shiny lure just before it chomps down and gets hauled out of water to become someone's lunch.”
“In the end, blame didn't shine on an individual. It was a floodlight cast on all of us. And all because we longed for healing and happiness- as if happiness is a state of being. But it's not. Happiness is a vector. It's movement. Like my own momentum across the pool, joy can only be defined by the speed at which you're moving away from pain.”
“Those eyes of his just look up at me, pupils dilated in the diffused lights of the room. Wide, black pools, seeking out galaxies.”
“... "Keep your eyes on the prize," although I think he should have also said "Go after the prize," too; and maybe that's why prizes ever came his way, because all he ever did was look at them.”
“Walls don't fall without effort.”
“I love you, Brew." "No you don't," he said. "Just shut up and take it," I told him. He smiled. "Okay.”
“The thing was, if I had found a way to escape- even for just a little while- I knew the pain would be there waiting for me when I got back.”
“It was easier to deal with Tennyson when he was fighting me; but having him on my side was frightening, because now I didn't know who the enemy was.”
“The question wasn't whether or not I cared about him; the question was, how much? I'm glad Tennyson didn't ask that, because then I'd have to ask myself; and I already knew the answer. I cared far more than was safe.”
“You know," he said, his voice making me feel cold in spite of the heat, "this city can get ahold of you and pull you back no matter how hard you try to climb out. Like a grave.”
“He's a conundrum- and there's still a piece missing from the puzzle." Whatever that piece was, there was a part of me telling me not to get involved- that it was too much to handle. That you shouldn't go out on a limb unless you're absolutely sure the limb can support your weight.”
“Whoever invented the spork should be killed.”
“We're this big melting pot, but someone turned up the heat too high, and the stew started to burn. Gangs, crime, fights, and fear are now a regular part of our local stew.”
“...You know something, don't you?""I know lots of things--your inquiry needs to be more specific.""Just answer the question.""True/false or multiple choice?”
“Ooh, I like this one!" Connor says. "'Diminished prospects for future.' Sounds like a stock report!”
“So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?”
“The way I see it, the impossible happens all the time; but we're so good at taking it for granted, we forget it was once impossible.”
“Funny how morality, which always seems so black and white can be influenced so completely by what you were raised to believe.”
“Bring on the dancing bear!”
“This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds.”
“Never ask how. At that moment, it felt like the wisest advice I had ever gotten.”
“I can't destroy things so beautiful.""Time will destroy them if you don't. Time destroys everything. But if you destroy them, it will mean something.”
“Dreams can twist your emotions like no reality can.”
“Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.”
“Lethargy. It's a word I know, because it's in one of my father's favorite expressions. Lethargy breeds lethargy. It means the more you lie around doing nothing, the more you want to lie around doing nothing. Your limbs and your mind feel so heavy that it becomes a major effort just to lift your arm to channel surf.”
“At that moment he could have said the earth was made of chocolate pudding and I would have believed it.”
“When you truly start to care about someone you become vulnerable to all sorts of things.”
“The way I see it, truth only looks good when you're looking at it from far away. It's kind of like that beautiful girl you see on the street when you're riding past in the bus...there she is, this amazing girl walking by on the street, and you think if you could only get off this stupid bus and introduce yourself to her, your life would change.The thing is, she's not as perfect as you think, and if you ever got off the bus to introduce yourself, you'd find out... This girl is truth. She's not so pretty, not so nice. But then, once you get to know her, all that stuff doesn't seem to matter.”
“This is why I don't speak sooner. Other people, they talk, talk, talk until words mean nothing. There is no truth.' He pointed to his chest. 'I keep truth here. Not in other people's ears.'―The Night Butcher”
“But sometimes you get a career and then you suddenly realize you don't have a life. Or if you stay at home with your family, you suddenly realize that your life is actually everyone else's life, not your own. Either way, when you got all your eggs in one basket, the basket gets heavy. Maybe the eggs start to break.”
“I mean, it's like we all get our raw materials from our families―but it's up to us whether we build bridges or bombs.”
“I wasn't expecting that. It hit me in a place I didn't know was there. All I could think of was one of those medical shows. They're operating on some poor slob, they accidentally nick an artery, and he starts gushing. 'We got a bleeder!' the surgeon yells, and everybody comes rushing to the operating table. Nobody was rushing to me, though.”
“The all-seeing government can be very nearsighted when it comes to scrutinizing the actions of its own appendages.”
“Small victories are better than none.”
“If it was a time bomb, then what she had done that day was started the clock.”
“Suddenly, Tara's accomplishment was clear. She had lined up allies among the school's various groups and got them all to work together for probably the first time in the school's history. She was like a master builder who could bend materials like stone and steel and clay to her will... except her materials were flesh and spirit.”
“With hardly any effort at all, she made me feel special. Just like all the other people she toyed with.”