"What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful."
— Scott Westerfeld

"Sometimes the facts in my head get bored and decide to take a walk in my mouth. Frequently this is a bad thing."
— Scott Westerfeld (So Yesterday)

"It's amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing."
— Scott Westerfeld (Peeps)

"Her only way home was to betray her friend."
— Scott Westerfeld (Uglies)

""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."
— Scott Westerfeld (Uglies)

"There was a species of middle pretty who smiled at everything: happy smile, disappointed smile, you're-in-trouble smile."
— Scott Westerfeld (Pretties)

"High school wasn't a trial by fire or some ordeal that had to be survived. It was all a big joke. You just had to provide the laugh track."
— Scott Westerfeld (Midnighters)

"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."
— Scott Westerfeld (Midnighters)

"People only worry about the uncanny for about a week; that's the end of their attention span. After that, suspicions turn into shtick."
— Scott Westerfeld (Peeps)

"I love my virginity to the apocalypse."
— Scott Westerfeld

"...History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep. Before the operation, there were wars and mass hatred and clear-cutting. Whatever these lesions make us, it isn't a far cry from the way humanity was in the Rusty era. These days we're just a bit...easier to manage.


Tally shivered again, but not from the cold. It was hard to think of the Rusties as actual people, rather than as just an idiotic, dangerous, and sometimes comic force of history. But there were human beings down there, whatever was left of them after a couple hundred years, still sitting their blackened cars, as if still trying to escape their fate....
..."Maybe they didn't want you to realize that every civilization has its weakness. There's always one thing we depend on. And if someone takes it away, all that's left is some story in history class."...


...And that was her city in a nutshell, Tally realized. Nothing left to itself. Everything turned into a bribe, a warning, or a lesson....

...Sometimes Tally felt she could almost accept brain damage if it meant a life without reconstituted noodles. "
— Scott Westerfeld (Uglies)

"Of course, getting what you wanted never turned out the way you'd thought it would.

..."What do they teach you in school these days?"

"That the Rusties almost destroyed the world," Tally recited.

"There's your answer."
...
Dr. Cable nodded."WE are under control, Tally, because of the operation. Left alone, human beings are a plague. They multiply relentlessly, consuming every resource, destroying everything they touch. Without the operation, human beings always become Rusties."
...


"YOU are like that, Tally. You have ALWAYS been like that! No cure is going to make you any different--you were busy betraying people a long time ago. You didn't need any operation to make you selfish and shallow and full of yourself. YOU ALREADY WERE."


Tally just stuffed another cookie into her face. OF COURSE you'd run into Tally Youngblood in the emergency bay, they were thinking. Where else? They were probably wondering what piece of major architecture had crumbled under her this time.


...Looking down, Tally shook her head and sighed. Sometimes it felt liker her life was a series of falls from ever-greater heights.
...


She smiled as she stared into the flames. Nature was tough, it could be dangers, but unlike Dr.Cable or Shay or Peris--unlike people in general--it made sense. ...


Then she remembered Dr.Cable's words. Humanity is a cancer, and we are the cure. Violence was what the cities had been built to end, and part of what the operation switched off in pretties' brains. The whole world that Tally had grown up in was a firebreak against this awful cycle. But here was the natural state of the species, right in front of her. In running from the city, perhaps this was what Tally was running toward.

...


Maybe the barriers around Tally's pretty world weren't as obvious as the little men hanging in the trees, but they were just as hard to escape. She remembered how Peris had chickened out as he' looked down on the wild from the balloon, suddenly unwilling to jump and lave behind everything he'd known. Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to as least try to grow your own brain. Otherwise, you might as well be living on a reservation, worshiping a bunch of bogus gods.

...


"Tally, everyone in the city is manipulated. The purpose of everything we're taught is to make us afraid of change...."(Zane-la<3)

...

(after Tally shouts at David..)
"Yeah, I suppose that's true." Zane chuckled softly. "Do me a favor, Tally? If you ever break up with me, just leave a note."

"
— Scott Westerfeld (Pretties)

"'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 (So Yesterday)

"Nature,at least,didn't need an operation to be beautiful.It just was."
— Scott Westerfeld Uglies Tally