Quotes by Scott Westerfeld

That was the trick - to keep punching, no matter what.

What if destiny doesnt care?

The universe is math on fire.

First love is amazing and wonderful, but a kind of panic underlies it, a sense of not knowing what youre doing.

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

And I kind of love it that you want to know everything.

...this is life. Right here in this room, with you, is life.

You dont know what its like, when your best friend disappears.

Looking for a thousand years is worth it, if in the end you find what you need.

More lies, but maybe lies were better than the truth.

But I feel more real when Im around her. Like Im not fading.

The best way to know a city is to eat it.

Were not freaks, Tally. Were normal. We may not be gorgeous, but at least were not hyped-up Barbie dolls.

Your father always suspected that being pretty-minded is simply the natural state for most people. They want to be vapid and lazy and vain—Maddy glanced at Tally—and selfish. It only takes a twist to lock in that part of their personalities. He always thought that some people could think their way out of it.

Some mornings when I wake up, it takes a long time to remember who I am. Like, it takes a while for everything thats happened in last month to download into my brain. Its nice, not knowing. Even if its just for five minutes.

Thats the worst thing they do to you, to any of you. Whatever those brain lesions are all about, the worst damage is done before they even pick up the knife: Youre all brainwashed into believing youre ugly.

Sure, zombies can “be a metaphor.” They can represent the oppressed, as in Land of the Dead, or humanity’s feral nature, as in 28 Days. Or racial politics or fear of contagion or even the consumer unconscious (Night of the Living Dead, Resident Evil, Dawn of the Dead). We could play this game all night.But really, zombies are not “supposed to be metaphors.” They’re supposed to be friggin’ zombies. They follow the Zombie Rules: they rise from death to eat the flesh of the living, they shuffle in slow pursuit (or should, anyway), and most important, they multiply exponentially. They bring civilization down, taking all but the most resourceful, lucky and well-armed among us, whom they save for last. They make us the hunted; all of us.That’s the stuff zombies are supposed to do. Yes, they make excellent symbols, and metaphors, and have kick-ass mythopoeic resonance to boot. But their main job is to follow genre conventions, to play with and expand the Zombie Rules, to make us begin to see the world as a place colored by our own zombie contingency plans.

Most mens awareness doesnt extend past their dinner plates.

Im not the one going for a biology degree. Im just a philosophy major who eats people.

The Shrink always warned me that carriers stay wracked with lifelong guilt. Its not an uplifting thing having turned lovers into monsters. We feel bad that we havent turned into monsters ourselves--survivors guilt, thats called. And we feel a bit stupid that we didnt notice our own symptoms earlier. I mean, Id been sort of wondering why the Atkins diet was giving me night vision. But that hadnt seemed like something to worry about...