Unwind (Unwind Dystology, #1)

by Neal Shusterman

In a perfect world everything would be either black or white, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn’t a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is.

One thing you learn when you’ve lived as long as I have—people aren’t all good, and people aren’t all bad. We move in and out of darkness and light all of our lives. Right now, I’m pleased to be in the light.”

“You can’t change laws without first changing human nature,” one of the nurses often said as she looked out over the crowd of crying infants. Her name was Greta. Whenever she said something like that, there was always another nurse within earshot who was far more accepting of the system and would counter with, “You can’t change human nature without first changing the law.” Nurse Greta wouldn’t argue; she’d just grunt and walk away.

See, if you paint wrong because that’s the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you’re an artist.”

“You’ve got questions coming out of you like farts on Thanksgiving.”

“Just because the law says it, that doesn’t make it true.” “Yeah, well, just because the law says it, that doesn’t make it false, either. It’s only the law because a whole lot of people thought about it, and decided it made sense.”

“How can you pass laws about things that nobody knows?” “They do it all the time,” says Hayden. “That’s what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.”

You see, a conflict always begins with an issue—a difference of opinion, an argument. But by the time it turns into a war, the issue doesn’t matter anymore, because now it’s about one thing and one thing only: how much each side hates the other.”