Scott Westerfeld famous quotes

What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Beauty #Beautiful #Self Esteem

She looked at David closely, and the feeling was still there. She could see that his forehead was too high, that a small scar cut a white stroke through his eyebrow. And his smile was pretty crooked, really. But it was as if something had changed inside Tally's head, something that had turned his face pretty to her.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Cutting #Eyebrows #White

I'd watched too many schoolmates graduate into mental institutions, into group homes and jails, and I knew that locking people up was paranormal - against normal, not beside it. Locks didn't cure; they strangled.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Home #Jail #People

The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Love #Heart #Hatred

Nature didn't need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Love #Beauty #Beautiful

The Internet is global and seemingly omniscient, while iPods and phones are all microscopic workings encased in plastic blobjects. Compare that to a steam engine, where you can watch the pistons move and feel the heat of its boilers. I think we miss that visceral appeal of the machine.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Moving #Thinking #Phones

A little drama wins more friends than boring.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Drama #Winning #Littles

Maybe this was how you stayed sane in wartime: a handful of noble deeds amid the chaos.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Deeds #Noble #Chaos

We don't always get to choose what we love.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Love

Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Life #Wisdom #Thinking

Why are you still wearing...?" Aya began. "Oh, that's not smart plastic? You're really an ugly?" David rolled his eyes and Shay said quietly, "David's never had any surge at all. But I wouldn't use the word ugly...Tally might eat you.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Smart #Eye #Use

The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening, but they choked everything around them.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Beautiful #Flower #Delicate

I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Truth #Lying #Sometimes

The lie took form as she spoke, pulling on as many strands of truth as it could reach.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Lying #Form #Spokes

It's amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Travel #Nature #Life Is

The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Summer #Cat #Sky

Sometimes you can’t choose what you love.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Sometimes

Good books make you ask questions. Bad readers want everything answered.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Book #Want #Good Book

I can’t imagine anything worse than being required to have fun.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Fun #Having Fun #Imagine

Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Dream #Fall #Cutting

As a bio major, I figured "free will" meant chemicals in your brain telling you what to do, the molecules bouncing around in a way that felt like choosing but was actually the dance of little gears--neurons and hormones bubbling up into decisions like clockwork. You don't use your body; it uses you.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Decision #Brain #Gears

Two weeks of killer sunburn is worth a lifetime of being gorgeous
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Two #Killers #Gorgeous

Ring around the rosie. A pocket full of posie. Ashes ashes, we all fall down. Some people say that this poem is about the Black Death, the fourteenth-century plague that killed 100-million people... Sadly, though, most experts think this is nonsense... How can I be so sure about this rhyme when all the experts disagree? Because I ate the kid who made it up.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Fall #Kids #Thinking

Tally smiled. At least she was causing trouble to the end. "I'm Tally Youngblood," she said. "make me pretty.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Trouble #Said #Ends

As one does a bear riding a bicycle. One sees it so rarely. (Spoken by Volger, on Deryn)
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Riding A Bicycle #Bears #Doe

If you see everything through hovercams and feed stories, you wind up blind to what's right in front of you.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Wind #Stories #Blind

That was the whole point of being special: You existed to make sure everyone else behaved, but that didn't mean YOU had to.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Mean #Special

A rat called Possible New Strain was sitting under a spaghetti strainer held down with a pile of journalism textbooks, saying rude things in rat-speak.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Rude #Sitting #Rats

He and I have this... personality conflict. Namely, I think he should get a new one.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Thinking #Personality #Conflict

To everyone who loves a long-secret romance, revealed at last.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Long #Romance #Secret

No matter how far from the war we run, it always catches up with us.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Running #War #Matter

You can't blame a match for a house made of straw, Alek.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#House #Blame #Made

But they're already singing our praises!" "They are Americans. They toot their horns for anything.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Singing #Praise #Horns

I go where the lizards tell me.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Lizards

Maybe she still was a pretty-head, making up irrational stories about the empty forest. The longer she stayed alone out here, the more Tally understood why the Rusties and their predecessors had believed in invisible beings, praying to placate spirits as they trashed the natural world around them.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Stories #World #Forests

The Rusty Ruins were the remains of an old city, a hulking reminder of back when there'd been way too many people, and everyone was incredibly stupid. And ugly.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Stupid #Cities #People

Lilt pulled away. "I saw what he was doing, so I cleared a path for him. I helped him do it..." She shook her head, tears tracking the dust off her face, and turned to stare at the fallen tower. "Have we all gone mad to want this?
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Dust #Mad #Tears

You're splitting?" "No sh*it, Sherlock.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Splitting

Not everything made you stronger. It was possible to survive, yet still be crippled for your trouble. Sometimes it was okay to run away, to skip the test, to chicken out. Or at least to get some help.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Running #Stronger #Tests

Gravity was something you could beat; all it took was hydrogen, hot air, or even a bit of rope. But being a girl was a miserable, never-ending struggle.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Girl #Struggle #Air

I expect that you must receive top marks at school, young lady." Madeleine smiled as she stirred her tea. "There are always rewards for those who state the obvious frequently and with conviction.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#School #Tea #Rewards

My name is tally youngblood and my mind is very ugly
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Names #Mind #Ugly

Your personality - the real you inside - was the price of beauty.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Real #Personality

It's not the traveling that takes courage Tally. I've done much longer trips on my own. It's leaving home.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Home #Leaving #Done

She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn't even a pretty one.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Weed #Selfish #Orchids

I feel like sometimes my best friend is not my best friend but my mortal enemy
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Enemy #My Best Friend #Sometimes

Sooner or later usually means too late
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Mean #Too Late #Sooner Or Later

Dying is one of those things that can’t be fixed. Not by talking about it, not with all the brain surge in the world.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Talking #Brain #Dying

You look beautiful - David
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Beautiful #Looks #You Look Beautiful

What about a hoverboard?" "It's waiting on the roof, of course." Dr. Cable snorted. "What is it about you miscreants and those things?
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Waiting #Drs #Roof

She carried a knife inside of herself now, one that was always cutting her. She could feel it every time she swallowed, every time her thoughts strayed from the splendor of the wild.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Cutting #Knives #Splendor

It's just programming" "No. It's because I love him
-- Scott Westerfeld

#I Love Him #Programming

He squeezed her hand. "Then I'll come get you, wherever you are when it happens. We'll be okay." "But what about everybody else?" He stared out across the river, nodding slowly. "My guess is, everybody else is in big trouble.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Rivers #Hands #Nodding

Tally turned away. Five minutes was suddenly too long to stand here, eyes burning, unable to cry.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Eye #Long #Burning

it's not called the Rusty Ruins because some guy called Rusty found them.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Guy #Ruins #Found

Once you told yourself a story enough times, it was so easy to keep on believing it.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Believe #Stories #Enough Time

Okay... That's still blind-making.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Blind #Okay #Stills

You young things are too easily persuaded by the touch of lips.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Lips #Young

Money's the same, whoever gives it to you. That was the point of money, after all: crisp and clean or wrinkled or disintegrated into quarters - a dollar was always worth a hundred cents.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Giving #Dollars #Quarters

Junkies might be easy to knock down, but they're never fragile. They have souls like old leather shoes studded with steel, and they're about as much good as friends.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Shoes #Soul #Might

Plot idea: 97% of the world's scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Ideas #Oil #Environmental

Turns out if you never lie, there's always someone mad at you.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Lying #Mad #Never Lie

I make it a policy never to appear surprised" - Dr Barlow
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Drs #Policy

Ah. So he's forgotten the most important rule of warfare. Which is... That nothing ever goes to plan.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Important #Warfare #Forgotten

History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Sheep #People #Majority

Becoming pretty doesn't just change the way you look," she said. "No," David said. "It changes the way you think.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Thinking #Way #Becoming

I have no formal training as a writer at all, not even a single English class in college.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#College #Class #Training

Hard work's a good distraction.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Hard Work #Distraction

When the term machine gun enters common parlance, the word machine becomes much more sinister.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Gun #Machines #Common

What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Real #Mean #Years

I've learned a lot about stage-managing for illustration. Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image. I've also learned to making big-scale design decisions early.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Character #Illustration #Design

I wouldn't say design has become strictly functional. A lot of cars these days look downright comic book to me, and the info-gadgets with which late industrial people spend the most time - phones, music players, etc. - are blobjects.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Book #Player #Phones

I used to be a pre-industrial writer: thousands of words in a spurt and then a few days off. But as I get older, I've switched to a mode best described as 'slow and steady wins the race.' Basically, I write during the same four hours every day, after breakfast and the all-important coffee, generally in the same room and wearing the same pajamas.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Coffee #Writing #Winning

Luckily for writers - and unluckily for history - every scientific idea creates human conflict.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Ideas #Conflict #Humans

Dare to ask, "Where is my novel too simple?"
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Writing #Simple #Dare

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

#Loving Someone #Lost

The world rests upon a turtle, which itself stands on the back of an elephant!” Alek tried not to laugh. “Then what does the elephant stand on, madam?” “Don’t try to be clever, young man.” She narrowed her eyes. “It’s elephants all the way down!
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Clever #Eye #Men

You’d best ask the lady boffin, sir,” Newkirk said. “Midshipmen aren’t allowed to have opinions.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Opinion #Said

God, you mean I lost my virginity to the apocalypse?" Morgan sighed again. "The whole thing was really embarrassing; my parents sent me to Brooklyn when they found out." She shrugged. "I thought I’d be safe in a gay bar, okay? What were you doing in there anyway?" Lace looked at me sidelong. "You were where?" I took a sip of beer, swallowed it. "I, uh, hadn’t been in the city...very long. I didn’t know.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Mean #Beer #Gay

She turned to Frizz. "So you understand the problem? You can't let Tally know about Radical Honesty. There's no telling what she'll do if she finds out you could ruin her plans." Frizz's eyebrows rose. "So let me get this straight, Aya-chan. You want me, a person who can't lie, to lie about the fact that I can't lie?" "We need another plan," Hiro said.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Honesty #Lying #Eyebrows

I kissed him once," she whispered. "Well done. What did he do?" "Um..." Deryn sighed. "He woke up.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Done #Well Done #Wells

And here in America rival newspapermen attack each other on sight?
-- Scott Westerfeld

#America #Sight #Rivals

What if destiny doesn't care?
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Destiny #What If #Care

Did you really think I was too fragile to know what Deryn was?" "Fragile?" Volger looked about. "I hadn't thought so, but now I find you brooding in a bathroom. This doesn't speak well of your sturdiness.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Thinking #Bathroom #Speak

Fuzzy Tally is no more.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Fuzzy

In a world of extreme beauty, anyone normal is ugly.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Ugly #Normal #World

Perhaps Clankers and Darwinists would always be at war, if only in their hearts.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#War #Heart

I'm not the one going for a biology degree. I'm just a philosophy major who eats people.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Philosophy #People #Degrees

Making ourselves feel ugly is not fun." "We are ugly.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Fun #Ugly #Feels

It's just been a long week, that's all." "It's monday night, Jess." "My point exactly.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Monday #Night #Long

Life doesn't come with an instruction manual.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Instruction

It's just the way things are." she shrugged. "It's no one's fault." "Or everyone's.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Way #Faults

You and David could both be right. Maybe human beings are programmed … to help one another, even to fall in love. But just because it's human nature doesn't make it bad, Tally. Besides, we had a whole city of pretties to choose from, and we chose each other."-Zane
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Falling In Love #Cities #Helping

That was one problem with dramatic exits: Sometimes they wound up making you look like a bubblehead.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Looks #Exit #Problem

I'm not sure what I am anymore... Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me―a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures... That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Mistake #Thinking #People

This is the power of the Goliath, that no one on earth, Clanker or Darwinist, can escape. So we all must learn to share the globe, or perish together!
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Together #Earth #Share

...I want those perfect eyes and lips, and for everyone to look at me and gasp. And for everyone who sees me to think Who's that? and want to get to know me, and listen to what I say." "I'd rather have something to say.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Eye #Thinking #Perfect

That's how things were out here in the wild, she was learning. Dangerous or beautiful. Or both.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Beautiful #Dangerous

We're not freaks, Tally. We're normal. We may not be gorgeous, but at least we're not hyped-up Barbie dolls.
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Barbie #May #Normal

maybe when you look at your face 50 times its really not that interesting anymore
-- Scott Westerfeld

#Interesting #Faces #Looks