Neal Shusterman
Try to see things differently - It's the only way to get a clearer perspective on the world and on your life.
I have a color-coded computer spreadsheet that divides things down to chapter fragments. Each character's point-of-view is a different color. The text of the manuscript is color-coded the same way. The last thing I do before submitting the manuscript is turn all those colors back to black.
I love writing music, but it seems I'm always writing words, so I don't get much time to do it.
Before I start, I trick myself into thinking I know what's going to happen in the story, but the characters have ideas of their own, and I always go with the character's choices. Most of the time I discover plot twists and directions that are better than what I originally had planned.
I post on Twitter regularly, and when I checked my followers, I saw that my own characters were following me. They sounded eerily like my characters would actually sound. It was a very surreal thing to see come to life digitally!
I thought 'UnSouled' would come in at around 400 pages, but it took 650 pages, and even then I felt like I was rushing the conclusion, so I asked my editor and publisher if I could divide it again. So a sequel became a trilogy, and the trilogy became a tetralogy - although we're not calling it that.
My fans have always been so supportive, and several years ago, I realized that I could thank them by naming all my characters after my Twitter and Facebook fans.
I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.Collection: Inspiring
When you live a life without questions, you're unprepared for the questions when they come.Collection: Unprepared
Either things happen for a reason, or they happen for no reason at all. Either one's life is a thread in a glorious tapestry or humanity is just a hopelessly tangled knot.Collection: Tangled
Once in a while our school has half days, and the teachers spend the afternoon 'in service,' which I think must be a group therapy for having to deal with us.Collection: Teacher
Sure, when you're in the midst of your own suffering, it's easy to convince yourself that you're no good—but we are all tested in this life...The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.Collection: Men
There's ordinary people out there doing extraordinary things.Collection: People
Hope can be bruised and battered. It can be forced underground and even rendered unconscious, but hope cannot be killed.Collection: Unconscious
When you truly start to care about someone you become vulnerable to all sorts of things.Collection: Care
Sure, I can talk like you, but I choose not to, It's like an art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he could paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on the side of a face... 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 can take that to the grave and dig it up when you need it.Collection: Art
In this world, there is a fine line between enlightenment and brain damage.Collection: Brain
Who am I? The sum of your dreams, the thrill you refuse to grasp, the unknown you fear.Collection: Dream
Small victories are better than none.Collection: Victory
The sad truth about humanity...is that people believe what they're told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.Collection: Believe
does a sick society get so used to its illness that it can't remember being well? what if the memory is too dangerous for the people who like things the way they are?Collection: Memories
Words don't hurt you." Which is one of the hugest criminal lies perpetrated by adults against children in this world. Because words hurt more than any physical pain.Collection: Hurt
Cities are never random. No matter how chaotic they might seem, everything about them grows out of a need to solve a problem. In fact, a city is nothing more than a solution to a problem, that in turn creates more problems that need more solutions, until towers rise, roads widen, bridges are built, and millions of people are caught up in a mad race to feed the problem-solving, problem-creating frenzy.Collection: Race
His life has been like a ballpark, hasn't it? All lines, structure, and rules, never changing. But now he's been hit over the wall into unknown territory.Collection: Wall
Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.Collection: Kids
...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.Collection: Moving
I think all mothers are alike, regardless of cultural background, when it comes to illogical cleaning.Collection: Mom
No true hero ever believes that they are one.Collection: Believe
That's what law is: educated guesses at right and wrong.Collection: Law
If your heart tells you something but your mind tells you something else, which do you believe? Both are just as apt to lie. In fact, they play at deceit all the time. Mostly they balance each other, giving us that crucial reality check. But what happens on the rare occasions when they conspire together?Collection: Lying
What's the point of living if you're going to hate the world? Guard your heart if you have to, but don't shut it away.Collection: Hate
Love turns a heart to crystal...Much more valuable, but much more fragile.Collection: Heart
Stupid dreams. Even the good ones are bad, because they remind you how poorly reality measures up.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Hate
What, are you totally psycho?" I shouted. "Maybe I am!" he screamed back at me. "Maybe that's just what I am. Maybe I'm that quiet guy who suddenly goes nuts and then you find half the neighborhood in his freezer." I gotta admit, that one stumped me for a second - but only for a second. "Which half?" I asked. "Huh?" "Which half of the neighborhood? Could you make it the people on the other side of Avenue T, because I never really liked them anyway.Collection: Nuts
How can you do the right thing when you can't figure out what that is? When all you have before you are choices in various shades of wrong?Collection: Choices
It does, Tennyson, because there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. There’s a fine line between being assertive and being a bully. And you’re on the wrong side of both lines.Collection: Bully
You think you want to know the secrets of the universe. You think you want to see the way things all fit together. You believe in your heart of hearts that enlightenment will save the world and set you free. Maybe it will. But the path to enlightenment is rarely a pleasant one.Collection: Believe
As your older brother, it's my sacred duty to save you from yourself." She brings her fists down on the table, making all the dinner plates jump. "The ONLY reason you're fifteen minutes older than me is because you cut in front of the line, as usual!Collection: Brother
Sharks have a deadly form of claustrophobia. It's not so much fear of enclosed spaces as it is inability to exist in them. No one knows why. Some say it's the metal in aquariums that throws their equilibrium off. But whatever it is, big sharks don't last long in captivityCollection: Sharks
For standing between Cody and his pain is my obligation, and standing between my uncle and his pain is my rent, but the pain I coax from Bronte is my joyCollection: Uncles
All this time, Lev ever realized what he needed. He did not need to be adored or pitied. He needed to be forgiven. Not by God, who is all forgiving. Not by people like Marcus and Pastor Dan, who would always stand by his side. He needed to be forgiven by an unforgiving world.Collection: People
the captain is supposed to go down with the ship" . "unless the first mate knocks him out and throws him in a lifeboatCollection: Captains
Connor smiles with mocking warmth at him, and glances at the tattoo on his wrist. "I like your dolphin.Collection: Tattoo
Looks are deceiving," Risa says. "After all, when I first saw you I thought you looked reasonably intelligent.Collection: Intelligent
Anger is only our friend when we know its caliber and how to aim it.Collection: Aim
It's a big question. Where do you begin to change the world?Collection: World
Monster only had the power that you gave themCollection: Monsters
It's amazing that something as simple as a kiss can overpower the worst of worries.Collection: Kissing