Scott Westerfeld Quotations

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

When I finish a first draft, I often look back at first chapters I wrote and laugh at them. They're like pictures of yourself in middle school. You're embarrassed to see them.

When the term 'machine gun' enters common parlance, the word 'machine' becomes much more sinister.

Ninety percent of the research comes first. I mostly blunder around reading stuff and talking to smart people until an idea batters or oozes its way through to my narrative brain.

I found a great book called 'Slang Through the Ages' by Jonathon Green. It's basically a thesaurus of historical slang, and had lots of great old uses.

I think any List of Best X creates arguments and people saying 'You listed that rubbish?' That's what lists like this are for.

Warning stickers on books would be a nightmare.

Sometimes you have to delete characters from a scene just to keep from overcrowding the image.

I moved to New York when I was 21 or 22 as a graduate fellow.

I have no problem with commenters stating strong opinions, except for my usual annoyance with people who don't agree with me.

The difference between being a part-time writer and a full-time writer is like the difference between dating someone and living with them. Some of the romance is gone, but you learn things you'd never know just by dating.

Her only way home was to betray her friend.

Let others wage war. You, lucky Austria, shall marry.

He thinks Goliath can end the war," Alek managed at last. "The man wants peace!" "As do we all," Count Volger said. "But there are many ways to end a war. Some are more peaceful than others.

She couldn't disappoint the whole village. There were no wallscreens here, no newsfeeds or satellites bands, and touring soccer teams were no doubt few and far between. (...), that made stories a valuable commodity, and it probably wasn't very often that a stranger dropped in from the sky.

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.

Clear-cutting" was the word for what the Rusties had done to the old forests: felling every tree, killing every living thing, turning entire countries into grazing land. Whole rain forests had been consumed, reduced from millions of interlocking species to a bunch of cows eating grass, a vast web of life traded for cheap hamburgers. "Look, we're not clear-cutting. All we're doing is pulling out the garbage that the Rusties left behend," David said. "It just takes a little surgery to do it.

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.

Reality had no gears, and you never knew what surprises would come spinning out of its chaos.

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

You look beautiful - David

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

Alek said, "Do you think I'm being a fool?" "I think you're trying to do something good. But doing good is rarely easy, and no weapon has ever stopped a war.

You'd think that in a fight, NOT MOVING would be a bad habit!

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.

The very idea of making shoes by hand boggled her mind.

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

Now,young lady,I suppose you're here for a work assignment." Work?" Tally said. They both looked down at her puzzled expression, and Shay burst into laughter.

I love my virginity to the apocalypse.

you're infamous, Tally. Everyone's terrified of you. The new system may have made the other cities nervous, but they seem to think my little gang of psychotic sixteen-year-olds is worse" - Cable to Tally

But you weren't born expecting that kind of beauty in everyone, all the time. You just got programmed into thinking anything else is ugly.

What happens when perfection isn't good enough?

He makes me feel like that. Like flying.

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

there was a beautiful princess with a prince kissing her lips only the prince was totally ugly

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.

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

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.

My name is tally youngblood and my mind is very ugly

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

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

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.

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

She wasn't here to gawk. She was an infiltrator, a sneak, an ugly. And she had a mission.

One of the most common questions writers are asked is "Where do you get your ideas?" But the sad truth is, we don't know. Ideas can come at any time and from any direction: in the shower, waiting for an elevator, or while bouncing across Wikipedia pages.

Suddenly a pair of searchlights lanced out from the frigate. They swept across the dark expanse - bright knives slicing the night into pieces.

I'm Tally Youngblood. Make me pretty." -Tally Youngblood

Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at least try to grow your own brain.

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.

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.

Probably? So you're asking me to trust my life to steel wool and peanut butter?" "Poisoned peanut butter." "Cal, I don't care if it's nuclear peanut butter.

Left alone, human beings are a plague. They multiply relentlessly, consuming every resource, destroying everything they touch.

Once we turn, it’s new pretty, middle pretty, late pretty.” Shay dropped her arms, and her board stopped drifting. “Then dead pretty.

And it was pretty clear that no prince was showing up, or at least that he was really late.

She smiled, turning toward Alek. "You don't know what a friend you have in Dylan.

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?

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

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

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.

Sooner or later usually means too late

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

Where did you get that idea for a nose? - Frizz Mizuno

When she awoke, the world was on fire.

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

Making ourselves feel ugly is not fun." "We are ugly.

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

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.

I like my first lines short and declarative. No complicated sentences. Of course, that's not really a Scott thing. It's pretty classic grab-the-reader technique.

Two weeks of killer sunburn is worth a lifetime of being gorgeous

Which was worse: a friend with brain damage, or one who despised you?

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

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.

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!

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

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!

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

Hard work's a good distraction.

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

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

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

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.

However stupid the choice seemed, Shay had made it with her eyes open, and had respected Tally's choice to stay.

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.

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

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

Tally, do you ever suffer from sudden flashes of anger or euphoria, countersocial impulses, or feelings of superiority?

Sometimes the facts in my head get bored and decide to take a walk in my mouth. Frequently this is a bad thing.

Shay sometimes talked in a mysterious way, like she was quoting the lyrics of some band no one else listened to.

You're insane!" she shouted. "Pretty cool, huh?" "No!"Tally yelled. "Why didn't you tell me it was broken?" Shay shrugged. "More fun that way?" "More fun?" Her heart beating fast,her vision strangely clear. She was full of anger and relief and...joy. "Well, kind of. But you suck!

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I don't want to hurt you but I will if I have too - Tally Youngblood

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

So what are those balloons for? In case you fall off your hoverboard?' -- Tally to Peris