Scott Westerfeld

"You look beautiful - David"

"...humanity is a disease, a cancer on the body of the world."

"Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I love my virginity to the apocalypse."

"Maybe they’re not as mindless as we thought, or so dedicated to turning every last human into one of them. Like Kalyn says, they were just bored, waiting for something better to happen. And that better thing is us."

"Weird, even for one of us. Or maybe she's worse."Worse how"Normal."

"I can’t imagine anything worse than being required to have fun."

"Tally wondered if you could talk somebody out of their brain damage."

"All that glitters is not hovery."

"You don't look very happy."Tally tried to smile. David had shared his biggest secret with her; she should tell him hers. But she wasn't brave enough to say the words. "It's been a long night. That's all."He smiled back. "Don't worry, it won't last forever."

"Sure, zombies can “be a metaphor.” They can represent the oppressed, as in Land of the Dead, or humanity’s feral nature, as in 28 Days. Or racial politics or fear of contagion or even the consumer unconscious (Night of the Living Dead, Resident Evil, Dawn of the Dead). We could play this game all night. But really, zombies are not “supposed to be metaphors.” They’re supposed to be friggin’ zombies. They follow the Zombie Rules: they rise from death to eat the flesh of the living, they shuffle in slow pursuit (or should, anyway), and most important, they multiply exponentially. They bring civilization down, taking all but the most resourceful, lucky and well-armed among us, whom they save for last. They make us the hunted; all of us. That’s the stuff zombies are supposed to do. Yes, they make excellent symbols, and metaphors, and have kick-ass mythopoeic resonance to boot. But their main job is to follow genre conventions, to play with and expand the Zombie Rules, to make us begin to see the world as a place colored by our own zombie contingency plans."

"It’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing."

"Good books make you ask questions. Bad readers want everything answered."

"The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side."