Happiness is not a state of being. Happiness is a vector, it is movement.
Hope in the shadow of fear is the world’s most powerful motivator.
The fear of not living is a deep, abiding dread of watching your own potential decompose into irredeemable disappointment when ‘should be’ gets crushed by what is.
There is nothing to fear but fear itself,” the captain announces from the helm, “and the occasional man-eating monster.
We’re roughage,” Tyger said. “If we don’t cause a little intestinal distress, no one knows we’re there.
My artwork isn’t evolving, it’s deconstructing, and I don’t know why.
Perhaps that is the greatest crime of conquest–that a civilization is denied the right to evolve beyond its own embarrassment.
This book is so interesting. I always wonder what’s going to happen next.
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?
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.
We move in and out of darkness and light all our lives. Right now I’m pleased to be in the light.
When he touches a wall the ooze grows thicker, drawn to his and as if he’s become a gravity well for the darkness – and it occurs to me that the dark must be in love with the light. Yet one must always kill the other.
Dreams can twist your emotions like no reality can.
But remember that good intentions pave many roads. Not all of them lead to hell.
And I think, if thoughts are worth a penny, how much less promises must be worth. Especially the ones you’re likely to break.
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.
The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.
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.
Today he failed to change the world. As for tomorrow, who can tell?
You should never apologize for existing, Lev. Not even to all those people out there who wish you didn’t.
Do we exist because others perceive our existence, or is, indeed, our own affirmation enough?
I can’t help what I have any more than you can help what you don’t
Please give me a single reason why I shouldn’t hurl myself beneath the wheels of that bus.
How many kids are in the Graveyard?””A bunch.””Who sends your supplies?””George Washington. Or is it Abraham Lincoln? I forget.””How often do you receive new arrivals?””About as often as you beat your wife.
Wars have a way reinventing people. And making too many things disappear.-Sonia
Sometimes, Lev, I just want to smack you.””You already hit him with a car.
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.
It’s always the lesser of two evils.”I don’t see why there have to be any evils at all.’-Connor
I almost told her everything right then. I wanted to tell her about the Wolves, and how I was supposed to hate them, but when you spend your days with evil, some of it is bound to soak into your clothes, like cigar smoke in a closed room.
Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are.
They will find whatever button will make you dance, and dance you will, no matter how hideous the tune.
Hole…” He grips Risa’s hand tighter. “Hole, Risa, hole…” And she smiles “Yes, Connor,” she says. “You’re whole. You’re finally whole.
It made my blood boil so hot, my brain stopped working right.
The good Lord wouldn’t have put it in your heart if it wasn’t right.
I’m going out to find her, to make things right, or atleast properly wrong.
…One thing you learn when you’ve lived as long as I have-people aren’t all good, and people aren’t all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I’m pleased to be in the light.
You can’t change laws without first changing human nature… You can’t change human nature without first changing the law.
The way I see it, the impossible happens all the time; but we’re so good at taking it for granted, we forget it was once impossible.
This is not going to be easy. I’m good at being bad, but I’m bad at being good. I don’t know the first thing about good deeds.
Hope can be bruised and battered. It can be forced underground and even rendered unconscious, but hope cannot be killed.
Elasticity is a fundamental principle of perception,
while it’s five in the morning here, it’s also five in the evening somewhere in China—proving that incompatible truths make perfect sense when seen with global perspective.
…You know something, don’t you?””I know lots of things–your inquiry needs to be more specific.””Just answer the question.””True/false or multiple choice?
Live by your impulses, and you’ll be just like them. You’re better than that, aren’t you, Red?
Makes sense, the earth is quick to consume the flesh of things that ain’t natural.
We’re this big melting pot, but someone turned up the heat too high, and the stew started to burn. Gangs, crime, fights, and fear are now a regular part of our local stew.
I love you, Risa,” he says. “Every last part of me.
How can you pass laws about things that nobody knows?””They do it all the time,” says Hayden. “That’s what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.
It was at that moment he realized that his spirit was truly human once more. For he no longer remembered how to be alone without being lonely.
Once in a while our school has half days, and the teachers spend the afternoon ‘in service,’ which I think must be a group therapy for having to deal with us.
You see demons in the eyes of the world, and the world sees bottomless pit in yours.
It’s kind of like religion. It gives us comfort to believe we have defined something that is, by its very nature, indefinable. As to whether or not we’ve gotten it right, well, it’s all a matter of faith.
You see demons in the eyes of the world, and the world sees a bottomless pit in yours.
They all think medicine should be magic, and they become mad at me when it’s not.
Everything feels right with the world……and the sad thing is that I know it’s a dream. I know it must soon end, and when it does I will be thrust awake into a place where either I’m broken, or the world is broken.
I begin to wonder if David was like me. Seeing monsters everywhere and realizing there aren’t enough slingshots in the world to get rid of them.
The scariest thing of all is never knowing what you’re suddenly going to believe.
With hardly any effort at all, she made me feel special. Just like all the other people she toyed with.
I’m sure my parents must be proud. Or horrified. Or are bitterly arguing about whether they’re proud or horrified, and have already hired lawyers to resolve the dispute. -Hayden Upchurch
I think all mothers are alike, regardless of cultural background, when it comes to illogical cleaning.
First rule of motherhood, dearie: men are screw-ups. Learn it now and you’ll be a whole lot happier.
I’m against solutions that are worse than the problem. Like old women who want their hair dyed the color of shoe polish to hide the gray.
You tell your brother he’s gonna pay for that car in silver.
When you truly start to care about someone you become vulnerable to all sorts of things.
Those eyes of his just look up at me, pupils dilated in the diffused lights of the room. Wide, black pools, seeking out galaxies.
Great tragedies have great consequences. They ripple through the fabric of this world and the next. When the loss is too great for either world to bear, Everlost absorbs the shock, like a cushion between the two.
On a sunny Tuesday – for it seems so many awful things happen on a Tuesday – six astronauts and one schoolteacher attempted to pierce the sky. Instead they touched the stars.
I can’t destroy things so beautiful.””Time will destroy them if you don’t. Time destroys everything. But if you destroy them, it will mean something.
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.
He will only do the wrong thing when it’s the right thing to do..
Maybe we’re standing like coins on the edge?”Allie considered this. “Meaning?””Meaning, we might be able to shake things up a little, and find a way to come up heads.””Or tails,” suggested
The question wasn’t whether or not I cared about him; the question was, how much? I’m glad Tennyson didn’t ask that, because then I’d have to ask myself; and I already knew the answer. I cared far more than was safe.
How do you judge the brightness of a light when you’re the source? A spotlight can never see the shadows it casts.
One thing yo learn when you’ve lived as long as I have-people aren’t all good, and people aren’t all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I’m pleased to be in the light.
Man, Grandma, what big hair you have.””The better to style with, my dear.
On a hairpin turn, above the dead forest, on no day in particular, a white Toyota crashed into a black Mercedes, for a moment blending into a blur of gray.
We’ll never be ready. So I guess that means we’re as ready as we’ll ever be.
The thing was, if I had found a way to escape- even for just a little while- I knew the pain would be there waiting for me when I got back.
It was easier to deal with Tennyson when he was fighting me; but having him on my side was frightening, because now I didn’t know who the enemy was.
I always take credit for my acts of cruelty. To do otherwise is cowardice.
You know,” he said, his voice making me feel cold in spite of the heat, “this city can get ahold of you and pull you back no matter how hard you try to climb out. Like a grave.
but laugh, laugh, laugh, because if you ever stop laughing, it might just tear you apart