Pretties (Uglies, #2)

by Scott Westerfeld

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.

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

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.”

Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at least try to grow your own brain. Otherwise, you might as well be living on a reservation, worshipping a bunch of bogus gods.