912 Quotes by Neal Shusterman

They say you never know who’s the real hero and who’s the real coward until you’re looking death in the face. I’ve always been afraid of plenty of things, but fear isn’t what makes you a coward. It’s how depraved your heart becomes when fear gets pumped through it.

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.

Grief is not an excuse for depravity.

He tries to think of other things, other places, but his mind keeps being drawn back to this place. Everyone’s so close around him now. Yellow figures lean all around him like flower petals closing in. He does not deserve this. He has done many things, not all good, but he does not deserve this. And he never did get his priest.

Innocence is doomed to die a senseless death at our own hands, a casualty of the mistakes we can never undo.

I’m leaping off a cliff only to discover I can fly... and then realizing there’s nowhere to land. Ever. That’s what’s going on.

To name her is to sink her,” he told me. “That which we name takes greater weight than the sea it displaces. Ask any shipwreck.

Our bodies form a symbol, I think, as powerful as one of Hal’s – and it occurs to me that the most meaningful symbols of all must be based on all the different ways two people can embrace.

And when the abyss looks into you – and it will – may you look back unflinching.