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!
“Respect doesn't come without a little resentment.”
“I've got a secret for you," she whispered with n unpleasant grin on her face, "Something terrible is going to happen. Something terrible... and something wonderful.”
“When you drop a pebble into a pond, ripples spread out, changing all the water in the pool. The ripples hit the shore and rebound, bumping into one another, breaking each other apart. In some small way, the pond is never the same again.”
“She plays music to heal herself, but nothing can heal her brokenness.”
“I'm going out to find her, to make things right, or atleast properly wrong.”
“I've had enough of organizations for a while, no matter how good the cause. I prefer being a free-agent rabble-rouser." Dan”
“What? Were you born stupid, or did you just die that way?”
“People aren't all good, and people aren't all bad. We move in and out of darkness all our lives.”
“Because if their own parents didn't care enough about them to keep them, who would want them in Heaven?”
“They say you never know who's the real hero and who's the real coward until you're looking death in the face. I've always been afraid of plenty of things, but fear isn't what makes you a coward. It's how depraved your heart becomes when fear gets pumped through it.”
“I hadn't lived a real life―I'd had just a model of a life. Everything I did, everything I thought, was suspended safely by strings, too high up for anyone to damage. Zero contact, zero risk. Now those strings had been cut and I was going to die, never having had a chance to live without them.”
“I guess we all can't help peeking at our own imperfections, just like we can't help scratching a scab that keeps itching. When those imperfections are pasted across your face like that, exaggerated and magnified, it's hard to find all those good thoughts you have about yourself. If you believe those distorted reflections too deeply, you'll never get out of the maze.”
“No mirrors in the real world had the ability to reach inside you the way these did. You could tell yourself that the mirrors were simply telling lies, but you'd be wrong. They took tiny truths, swelling them out of proportion―and the fact that there was a kernel of truth in what they reflected made the effect devastating.”
“To be completely helpless in the face of life―powerless to do a single thing―that's what I'd always feared more than anything. It was like I'd been keeping all the edges of my life neat and clean, pretending the neatness was all that mattered, pretending life could somehow be controlled.”
“Griping is for those without a plan of action...”
“You know that feeling you get when your leg falls asleep? Well, I suddenly had that feeling in my spine. Like termites were chewing through the marrow in my backbone.”
“On my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize that the expression spoiled rotten meant exactly that. We kids were the apples of our parents' eyes, and I, for one, was rotting from inside out.”
“Suddenly it was obvious to Connor why they don't teach it. Once education was restructured and corporatized, they didn't want kids knowing how close they came to toppling the government. They didn't want kids to know how much power they really had.”
“The nation was tearing itself apart over pro-life and pro-choice but completely ignored the problems of the kids who were already here. I mean, no schools, no work, no clue if they'd even have a future. They just went nuts!”
“There's ordinary people out there doing extraordinary things.”
“You don't like her, do you?" "Who, me? No, I love her dearly. Evil scheming bitches are my favorite kind of people." (Risa)”
“So," says Lev, as casually as he can, "you wanna dance?" "Do you believe in the end of the world?" she responds. Lev shrugs. "I don't know. Why?" "Because the day after that is when I'll dance with you.”
“When you live a life without questions, you're unprepared for the questions when they come.”
“Just as the airplane graveyard was Heaven disguised as Hell, harvest camp is Hell masquerading Heaven.”
“It stands as an unspoken warning to everyy Unwind there. You will get with the program,or your stay here will be very, very, short. The lesson is always learned.”
“You're going to pee in someone's suitcase?""Do you have any other ideas?"And suddenly Miracolina begins to snicker, then giggle, then giggle, then cackle uncontrollably. "He's going to pee in someone's suitcase!""Quiet! Do you want people on the bus to hear you?"But Miracolina is beyond help. She's entered into a fullfledged laughter fit-the kind that leaves your stomach hurting. "They're gonna open their suitcase," she blurts between bursts of glee, "And their clothes’ll be full of pee!”
“I wanted to take everything I was feeling, put it in a cannon and aim it at him.”
“Sure, when you're in the midst of your own suffering, it's easy to convince yourself that you're no good—but we are all tested in this life...The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.”
“Leadership is about keeping toilets flushing," the Admiral once said. "Unless you're on the battlefront. Then it's about staying alive. Neither are pleasant.”
“You've got questions coming out of you like farts on Thanksgiving.”
“You don't go missing in a museum- you just get temporarily absorbed by the walls.”
“The sad truth about humanity...is that people believe what they're told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.”
“How do you judge the brightness of a light when you’re the source? A spotlight can never see the shadows it casts.”
“Then she offers him a slim but sincere smile, and he reluctantly returns it. It doesn't bridge the gap between them, but at least it marks the spot where the bridge might be built.”
“Tranq'd by your own gun,"Lev says."How pathetic.”
“Well...you're a martyr and I'm a patron saint-I can't think of anyone better!”
“They signed the unwind order just to spite each other,but laugh,laugh,laugh,Hayden, because if you ever stop laughing,it might just tear you apart worse than a Chop Shop.”
“does a sick society get so used to its illness that it can't remember being well? what if the memory is too dangerous for the people who like things the way they are?”
“We'll never be ready. So I guess that means we're as ready as we'll ever be.”
“Death doesn't just make all the world kin, it makes all religions one”
“but laugh, laugh, laugh, because if you ever stop laughing, it might just tear you apart”
“the captain is supposed to go down with the ship" . "unless the first mate knocks him out and throws him in a lifeboat”
“It's a big question. Where do you begin to change the world?”
“Lev smiles. "Leave it to you to turn someone else's screwup into gold”
“Then they pull onto Route 66, heading east into a world that's ripe for saving”
“Hayden shouts, "To the new Teen Uprising!”
“Which side was I on? There was no time to search for answers. All I could do now was ride on a werewolf's back, toward a destiny as hidden as the dark side of the moon.”
“You can't imagine what it's like to be torn between darkness and light- to be a traitor no matter what move you make. If my grandmother and Marissa died tonight, it would be because I had stayed in the darkness too long, flirting with the idea of being Cedric's consigliere. If that happened, I could never live with myself- but if Cedric gave me the bite as he planned, I would be forced to live with it forever. That was the worst hell I could imagine.”
“I went home and tried to sleep, but couldn't, so I stared up at the moon, watching how it's trailing edge faded into darkness, so close to being full, but not quite there. A pregnant moon, Grandma called it. Full almost to bursting, and ready to give birth to something unthinkable.”
“Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.”