It had never occurred to him before now that people could see reality in completely different ways.
Everyone in the city is manipulated. The purpose of everything we’re taught is to make us afraid of change.
Your first novel is like your first relationship. You won't really understand the decisions you make until years later...And you'll probably screw up the ending...First love is amazing and wonderful,...
Yeah, you should have seen your face. Actually, I should have seen your face. Stupid sneak suits.
Yeah, well. They’re more like ‘Keep Out’ signs, or ‘Keep In,’ I guess—as in keeping you guys in your place. The world goes on for a whole lot farther, trust me. This is just a trick to keep you from k...
Why are you still wearing...? Aya began. Oh, that's not smart plastic? You're really an ugly?David rolled his eyes and Shay said quietly, David's never had any surge at all. But I wouldn't use the wor...
When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty, There arises the recognition of ugliness. When they all know the good as good, There arises the recognition of evil.
When a single nation’s armies are ordered against each other, all is lost.
When Tally glanced out at the glowing horizon, her eyes opened wide. She’d never seen dawn from outside the city before. Like most uglies, she was rarely up early enough, and in any case the horizon w...
We're not freaks, Tally. We're normal. We may not be gorgeous, but at least we're not hyped-up Barbie dolls.
This is the power of the Goliath, that no one on earth, Clanker or Darwinist, can escape. So we all must learn to share the globe, or perish together!
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. —Francis Bacon, Essays, Civil and Moral, Of Beauty
There are probably a dozen perfect happy endings you could write. And a thousand bittersweet ones, and at least a million that are gloriously tragic. Alas, you only get to pick one.
The whole idea that he could take what he wanted without affecting anyone was bull****.
The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit. Of course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right.
The beauty of the world…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (part 3, Pretties)
Tally snorted. I don’t think it’s exactly boring, Shay. Doing what you’re supposed to do is always boring. I can’t imagine anything worse than being required to have fun. I can, Tally said quietly. Ne...
Shay’s eyes flashed. Or maybe when they do the operation—when they grind and stretch your bones to the right shape, peel off your face and rub all your skin away, and stick in plastic cheekbones so yo...
Reality had no gears, and you never knew what surprises would come spinning out of its chaos.
Out here, you find out that the city fools you about how things really work.