And," added Mikey. "She's my sister." The others looked at him for a moment, and broke out laughing." Yeah, yeah," Squirrel scoffed, "and the McGill is my cousin." Now Allie burst out laughing, which made Mikey more annoyed." If the McGill was your cousin," Mikey said, "I can guarantee he'd disown you.

— Neal Shusterman

And I think, if thoughts are worth a penny, how much fewer promises must be worth. Especially the ones you're likely to break.

— Neal Shusterman

And so, as the mob backs away to give them space... as the riot police holster their weapons, standing down, and as Rise takes the podium, calming the crowd with a voice as soothing as a sonata, Connor Lassie holds his family like he'll never let them go.

— Neal Shusterman

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? And there is the dance; strength and weakness, confidence and desolation.

— Neal Shusterman

But laugh, laugh, laugh, because if you ever stop laughing, it might just tear you apart

— Neal Shusterman

But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not all of them lead to hell.

— Neal Shusterman

Centering, however, is easier said than done. This I learned from a ceramics class I once took. The teacher made throwing a pot look easy, but the thing is, it takes lots of precision and skill. You slam the ball of clay down in the absolute center of the pottery wheel, and with steady hands you push your thumb into the middle of it, spreading it wider a fraction of an inch at a time. But every single time I tried to do it, I only got so far before my pot warped out of balance, and every attempt to fix it just made it worse, until the lip shredded, the sides collapsed, and I was left with what the teacher called “a mystery ashtray,” which got hurled back into the clay bucket. 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

Cities are never random. No matter how chaotic they might seem, everything about them grows out of a need to solve a problem. In fact, a city is nothing more than a solution to a problem, that in turn creates more problems that need more solutions, until towers rise, roads widen, bridges are built, and millions of people are caught up in a mad race to feed the problem-solving, problem-creating frenzy.

— Neal Shusterman

Conner Lassie. Scheduled to be unwound the 21st of November-until you went AWOL. You caused an accident that killed a bus driver, left dozens of others injured, and shut down an interstate highway for hours. Then, on top of it, you took a hostage AND shot a Java-cop with his own trans gun."..." He's the Akron AWOL?!

— Neal Shusterman

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.

— Neal Shusterman