Neal Shusterman

“Can I believe in that God too?”

“Then, in spite of everything, he began to smile. So much of his existence in Everlost had been full of despair. Despair, and a fear of losing what he had. But Allie was not lost, she was just there across the river, waiting for him to find her. Nick was not lost either--not entirely.It was then that Mikey McGill realized something. It must have been his sister who first called this place Everlost, because by naming it so, it stripped away all hope except for a faith in her, and the "safety" she could provide. Well, Mary was wrong on all counts, because nothing in Everlost was lost forever, if one had the courage to search for it.Mikey held tightly on to this shining truth as he and the golem sunk into the earth. Then with all the force of his heart, his mind, and his soul, Mikey McGill began to dig.”

“Perhaps that is the greatest crime of conquest--that a civilization is denied the right to evolve beyond its own embarrassment.”

“But now we've finally taken full possession of what is rightfully ours, because everyone must feel their own pain--and as awful as that is, it's also wonderful.”

“It's that quirky kind of weekend feeling they write ridiculous sunny-day songs about. You know the ones--I'm sure they're on your iPod even though you'd never admit it.”

“Part of my job is to help other kids find books, because not everyone has a keenly organized mind. Some kids could wander the library for hours and still have no idea how to find anything. For them, the Dewey Decimal System might as well be advanced calculus.”

“I know this is your hand now,' she tells him. "Roland would have never touched me like that." Connor smiles, and Risa takes a moment to look down at the shark on his wrist. It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No- the soul of a man.”

“And so when the scar wraith approached him, he took a diagonal step backward putting himself behind Squirrel like a king retreating behind a pawn.”

“Mooooon!” said the Ogre. “Tranquility …” Then he pointed at the full moon. “Neil Armstrong walked in a sea of tranquility.” Then he added, “It’s made of cheese. But you have to take off the plastic before you put it on a burger.”Mikey sighed.“What’s his story?” the wraith asked.“He’s chocolate,” Mikey said.”

“For weeks Charlie had been singing the same song over and over again.“Dinah won’t you blow…”He sang it twenty-four hours a day, with the same vacant, cheerful tone.”Dinah won’t you blow your hor-or-orn?”He kept the beat with his head, endlessly banging it against the hallways bulkhead.“Dinah won’t you blow…”Johnnie-O, who had very little patience to begin with, would have pulled out his hair, were it possible for an Afterlight’s hair to come out.“Dinah won’t you blow…”Johnnie squeezed his oversized hands into fists, wishing there was something he could bust, but having spent many years trying to break things, he knew more than anyone that Everlost stuff didn’t break, unless breakage was its purpose.“Dinah won’t you blow your horn!”“Dammit, will you shut your hole or I swear I’m gonna pound you into next Tuesday and then throw you out of the stinkin’ window where you and your song can drown and sink down to the center of earth for all I care, so you better shut your hole right now!”Charlie looked at him for a moment, eyes wide, considering it. Then he said, ”Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah!”Johnnie groaned.”

“I remember the first time I saw you,” Allie said.“I thought you smelled me first.”“Right,” said Allie. “The chocolate. But then I saw you as I sat up in the dead forest, thinking I knew you. At the time, I thought I must have seen you through the windshield when our cars crashed…. But that wasn’t it. I think, way back then, I was seeing you as you are now. Isn’t that funny?”“Not as funny as the way I always complained, and the way you always bossed me around!”They embraced and held each other for a long time.“Don’t forget me,” Nick said. “No matter where your life goes, no matter how old you get. And if you ever get the feeling that someone is looking over your shoulder, but there’s nobody there, maybe it’ll be me.”“I’ll write to you,” said Allie, and Nick laughed. “No really. I’ll write the letter then burn it, and if I care just enough it will cross into Everlost.”“And,” added Nick, “it will show up as a dead letter at that the post office Milos made cross into San Antonio!”Allie could have stood there saying good-bye forever, because it was more than Nick she was saying good-bye to. She was leaving behind four years of half-life in a world that was both stunningly beautiful, and hauntingly dark. And she was saying good-bye to Mikey. I’ll be waiting for you, he had said…. Well, if he was, maybe she wasn’t saying good-bye at all.Nick hefted the backpack on his shoulder. “Shouldn’t you be heading off to Memphis?” he said. “You’d better hit the road…. Jack.” Then he chuckled by his own joke, and walked off.”

“So the gods must mean something else,” said Jix.“God, not gods!” insisted Johnnie.Nick threw up his hands. “God, gods, or whatever,” said Nick. “Right now, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Jesus, or Kukulcan, or a dancing bear at the end of the tunnel. What matters is that we have a clue, and we have to figure it out.”“Why?” Johnnie asked again. “Why does God – excuse me, I mean ‘the Light of Universal Whatever’- why does it just give us a freakin’ impossible clue? Why can’t it just tell us what we’re supposed to do?”“Because,” said Mikey. “the Dancing Bear wants us to suffer.”

“Mary believes she was put on earth to bring an end to the living world.”Both Nick and Mikey just stared at her.“What do you mean … end?” asked Mikey.“End means end. Complete and total destruction. She wants to kill everyone and everything. She wants to bring down every building, burn every forest, empty every ocean of life. She wants to turn the earth into a dead planet …”

“The moment you're loved, that's when you got your soul.”

“Who says I'm insane?""Oh you're sane alright. You're so sane, you scare me.You're so sane, it's insane.”

“Do you know that if you take the books in an average school library and stretched out all those words into a single line, the line would go all the way around the world? Actually, I made that up, but doesn't it sound like it should be true?”

“I turn to our father, searching for an ally. "So Dad, is it legal for Bronte to date out of her species?"Dad looks up from his various layers of pepperoni and breadless cheese. "Date?" he says. Apparently the idea of Bronte dating is like an electromagnet sucking away all other words in the sentence, so that's the only word he hears."You're not funny," Bronte says to me."No, I'm serious," I tell her. "Isn't he like... a Sasquatch or something?""Date?" says Dad.”

“As your older brother, it's my sacred duty to save you from yourself."She brings her fists down on the table, making all the dinner plates jump. "The ONLY reason you're fifteen minutes older than me is because you cut in front of the line, as usual!”

“I wrote Unwind for lots of reasons, and it poses questions about alot of subjects. To state it briefly, I wanted to point out how when peopletake intractable positions on an issue, and stick to extreme sides,sometimes the result is a compromise that is worse than either extreme. Imeant it as a wake up call to society -- and to point out that sometimes theproblem IS that we take sides on an issue, when a different sort of approachis needed. It's also to pose questions about what it means to be alive.Where does life begin, where does it end -- and point out that there is nosingle answer to these questions. The problem is people who think there aresimple answers. People who see things as simple black-and-whiteright-and-wrong are the type of people who will end up with a world like theworld in Unwind.”

“Beautiful is dangerous.”

“No," says Ariana. "It was a dream. Reality got in the way, that's all.”

“(Why did they call them sneakers if it was so hard to sneak in them?)”

“Unwinds exist in the constant shadow of betrayal.”

“That's wisdom you can take to the grave, and dig up when you need it!”

“The Fatigues all talk like that. Big-Picture-speak, Risa calls it. Seeing the whole, and none of the parts. It's not just in their speech but in their eyes as well.When they look at Risa, she can tell they don't really see her. They seem to see the mob of Unwinds more as a concept rather than a collection of anxious kids, and so they miss all the subtle social tremors that shake things just as powerfully as the jets shake the roof.”

“So Connor stands there with secret anticipation each time there's a group of new arrivals, hoping beyond hope he'll find that self-righteous, self-important, pain-in-the-ass Lev still alive.”

“Connor bangs his head back sharply against the wall, hoping to jar loose the bad thoughts clinging to his brain. This is not a good place to be alone with your thoughts. Perhaps that's why Hayden feels compelled to talk.”

“That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.”

“No, it's not!" says Emby."Hey—he wanted my opinion, I gave it.""But it's wrong!""You see, Hayden? You see what you started?""Yes!" Hayden says excitedly. "It looks like we're about to have our own little Heartland War. Pity it's too dark for us to watch it.”

“Why are you still with me, Fry?" CyFi asks after one of his body-shaking seizures. "Any sane dude woulda taken off days ago."Who says I'm sane?""Oh, you're sane, Fry. You're so sane, you scare me. You're so sane, it's insane.”

“The Admiral's using us," he says to the kids around him. "Don't you see that?"Most of the kids just shrug, but Hayden's there, and he never misses an opportunity to add his peculiar wisdom to a situation. "I'd rather be used whole than in pieces," Hayden says.”

“The Bill of Life was signed, the Unwind Accord went into effect, and the war was over. Everyone was so happy to end the war, no one cared about the consequences”

“...the kind of people who can't bend without breaking”

“It does, Tennyson, because there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. There’s a fine line between being assertive and being a bully. And you’re on the wrong side of both lines.”

“People would cheer throw confetti and then go about breaking the resolutions they had made only moments before.”

“...New Beginning to the same old story”

“You think just because we got stars up here we can wish on 'em and make everything better”

“The homes here are almost identical, but not quite, full of people almost identical, but not quite.”

“Happiness is not a state of being. Happiness is a vector, it is movement.”

“For standing between Cody and his pain is my obligation, and standing between my uncle and his pain is my rent, but the pain I coax from Bronte is my joy”

“think of it this way," he said "It took nine months to get you born, so doesn't it figure it would take nine months to get you dead?”

“Adulthood can do the most horrific things to the best of people.”

“Guilt is easy, innocence is hard.”

“From the end of the bar, the bartender threw a sidelong look at him, so Clarence pulled out a broken Bluetooth headset and fixed it to his ear."I learned this trick while traveling with Mikey," Clarence told Nick. "Makes my brand of crazy the same as everyone else's.”

“...the first sign of civilization is always trash.”

“A family is a collection of strangers trapped in a web of DNA and forced to cope.”

“Then you'd better listen, because me sounding like Bronte is one of the signs of the apocalypse-and if the end fo the world is coming, good deeds could earn you Judgment day brownie points.”

“When it comes to such open-heart reflection, I'm a firm believer in the observer effect, which states that anything you try to observe is automatically changed by the mere fact that you're looking at it. The way I see it, if you try to study your emotions on a microscopic level, the best you can do is understand how it feels to hold the magnifying glass.”

“It's strange how we always want other people to feel what we feel. It must be a basic human drive. Misery loves company, right? Or when you see a movie that you love, don't you want to drag all your friends to see it as well? Because it's only good the second time if it's the first time for somebody else—as if their experience somehow resonates inside of you.”

“In horse racing they put these slats on either side of the horse's head, blocking the creature's peripheral vision. They're called blinders. They don't actually blind the horse, but they allow the horse to see only what's right in front of it; otherwise it might freak out and lose the race. People live with blinders too; but ours are invisible, and much more sophisticated. Most of the time we don't even know they're there. Maybe we need them, though, because if we took in everything all at once, we'd lose our minds. Or worse, our souls. We'd see, we'd hear, we'd feel so deeply that we might never resurface. So we make our decisions and base our lives on those decisions, never realizing we're seeing only one-tenth of the whole. Then we cling to our narrow conclusions like our lives depend on it.”