Scott Westerfeld Quotes

“The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“Her only way home was to betray her friend.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“Their reasons don't mean anything unless I have a choice.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“Sometimes, the hardest thing was doing
nothing.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“It didn't matter what you looked like. It was how you carried yourself, how you saw yourself.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“Your not alone, Tally. Don't pretend you are”

— Scott Westerfeld

“The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening, but they choked everything around them.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“Sometimes it felt like her life was a series of falls from ever-greater heights.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“He turned to face her again, his late-pretty composure crumbling. "But you're ... "
"Pretty? Think again." She smiled. "I'm Tally Youngbood. My mind is very ugly. And I'm taking your car.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“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.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“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.”

— Scott Westerfeld

The man was allergic to sleep.

— Scott Westerfeld

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

— Scott Westerfeld

I go where the lizards tell me.

— Scott Westerfeld

So, there was this beautiful princess.
She was locked in a high tower( ... )She was stuck up there( ... )So the only thing was to jump.

— Scott Westerfeld

“Nature was tough, it could be dangerous, but unlike Dr. Cable or shay, or peris-unlike people in general-it made sense. The problems it threw at you could be solved rationally.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“And you've actually watched it yourself?' I asked. 'Willingly?'
Sure. I had to see it, you know? Besides we should be safe. Only one in twenty viewers actually had a bad reaction. And it was mostly kids who were affected. I mean younger than you guys. I think the average age was about ten.'
That made me feel somewhat better.
But that was a kid's show,' said Jen. 'Maybe it affects everyone, but not that many adults were watching.'
That made me feel less better. I wanted my protective bangs back.”

— Scott Westerfeld

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

— Scott Westerfeld

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

— Scott Westerfeld

“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.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“She needed Andrew Simpson Smith, it was that simple. And he had spent his life training to help people like her. Gods.
"Okay, Andrew. But let's leave today. I'm in a hurry."
"Of course. Today." He stroked the place where his slight beard was beginning to grow. "These ruins where your friends are waiting? Where are they?"
Tally glances up at the sun, still low enough to indicate the eastern horizon. After a moment's calculation, she pointed off to the northwest, back toward the city and beyond that, the Rusty Ruins. "About a week's walk that way."
"A week?"
"That means seven days."
"Yes, I know the gods' calendar," he said huffily. "But a whole week?"
"Yeah. That's not so far, is it?" The hunters had been tireless on their march the night before.
He shook his head, an awed expression on his face. "But that is beyond the edge of the world.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“Assisted him? Dylan made the repairs. I only fell and hit my head, from what I can recall. Yes, I make excellent deadweight.”

— Scott Westerfeld

Just remember, the things we write, they aren't always really us.

— Scott Westerfeld

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

— Scott Westerfeld

“Sleep is a little slice of death.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“Keep challenging the gods”

— Scott Westerfeld

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

— Scott Westerfeld

“But you know what? It's not my behavior I'm worried about anymore. It's yours.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“And what can we conclude from this lesson, Your Highness?"
Alek glared at the man. "We can conclude, Count Volger, that discussing politics while fencing is idiotic.”

— Scott Westerfeld

Nice concept. But is it a trilogy or a tweet?" "I can't tell any more.

— Scott Westerfeld

“Mindy had explained that a lot of things had ghosts, not just people. Animals, machines, even things as vast as a paved-over forest or as humble as the smell of good cooking could leave traces of themselves behind. The world was haunted by the past.”

— Scott Westerfeld

But it wasn't any of those reasons that had set her on this course, Deryn knew. Alek was here in the city and needed help. Perhaps it was daft to risk everything for some barking prince, a boy who didn't even know she was a girl. But it was no more daft than Alek walking across a glacier to assist a wounded enemy airship, was it?

— Scott Westerfeld

A milli-Helen is enough beauty to launch exactly one ship

— Scott Westerfeld

“And even though her journal was just random sentences, she did spin stories in my head. The sound of her voice made dreams happen.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“Her parents didn't understand that braille meant big clunky books that marked you as different, while audiobooks live invisibly on your phone and text-to-speech gave you the whole damn internet.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“But I feel more real when I'm around her. Like I'm not fading.”

— Scott Westerfeld

Your book is smart and beautiful. I want to have its sequels.

— Scott Westerfeld

“I've always thought that science and fiction writing have a lot in common because they're both about modeling reality.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“Hi guys the book Im reading right this moment is called Uglies”

— Scott Westerfeld

“Fun fact: there are also 3,000 varieties of pears. That's right. Even PEARS are more complicated than you thought!”

— Scott Westerfeld

“She had changed the arc of her own story, merely by typing a couple of thousand words each day for thirty days.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“But I wanted to finish your book.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“Life sucked all right. It sucked hard, because it was random and terrifying and too easily lost. Life was full of death cults and psychopaths, bad timing and bad people. Life was broken ... Because you could make one mistake in righteous anger, and lose the person you most loved.
But everything that sucked about life also proved that it was priceless, because otherwise all of that wouldn't hurt so bad.”

— Scott Westerfeld

There are probably a dozen perfect happy endings you could write. And a thousand bittersweet ones, and at least a million that are gloriously tragic. Alas, you only get to pick one.

— Scott Westerfeld

“Instead, she rose a little onto her toes and they kissed again.”

— Scott Westerfeld

The sky was the color of cat vomit.

— Scott Westerfeld

A little drama wins more friends than boring.

— Scott Westerfeld

“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

“Turns out if you never lie, there's always someone mad at you.”

— Scott Westerfeld

“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