The Schwa Was Here
Neal Shusterman
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Life is like a bad haircut. At first it looks awful, then you kind of get used to it, and before you know it, it it grows out and you gotta get another haircut that maybe won't be so bad, unless of course you keep going to SuperClips, where the hairstylists are so terrible they oughta be using safety scissors, and when they're done you look like your head got caught in a ceiling fan. So life goes on, good haircut, bad haircut, until finally you go bald, and it don't matter no more. I told this wisdom to my mother, and she said I oughta put it in a book, then burn it. Some people just can't appreciate the profound.”
“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.”
“Touch is a freaky thing when you're not used to it. It makes you feel all kinds of things.”
“It comes with being sixteen," Mom said. "You teenagers, you go into a cocoon when you turn fifteen and don't come out for years." "So they become butterflies when they finally come out?" my little sister Christina asked. "No," Mom said. "They're still caterpillars, only now they're big fat caterpillars that smell.”
“It's called loitering, which is like littering with human beings as the trash.”
“I mean, it's like we all get our raw materials from our families―but it's up to us whether we build bridges or bombs.”
“[Dad] So your intentions were good. That's what matters. [Anthony] But isn't, like, the road to hell paved with good intentions? Yeah, well, so's the road to heaven. And if you spend too much time thinking about where those good intentions are taking you, you know where you end up? Jersey? I was thinking 'nowhere,' but you get the point.”
“I'm tired of eating your family's lousy, tasteless recipes," Dad said. "Tasteless recipes? My grandmother's rolling in her grave!" "It's from indigestion.”
“But sometimes you get a career and then you suddenly realize you don't have a life. Or if you stay at home with your family, you suddenly realize that your life is actually everyone else's life, not your own. Either way, when you got all your eggs in one basket, the basket gets heavy. Maybe the eggs start to break.”
“Lik the tree falling in the forest," says Ira. "Huh?" "You know, the old question - if a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it, does it really make a sound?" Howie considers this. "Is it a pine forest, or oak?" "What's the difference?" "Oak is a much denser wood; it's more likely to be heard by someone on the freeway next to the forest where no one is.”
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Book Keywords:
simile, humor, touch, trash, sayings, intentions, touching, litter, loitering
