Home > Work > Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1)
41 " I think all young women are cursed with a streak of unrelenting foolishness, and all young men are cursed with a streak of absolute stupidity. "
― Neal Shusterman , Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1)
42 " The greatest achievement of the human race was not conquering death. It was ending government. "
43 " Mortals fantasied that love was eternal and its loss unimaginable. Now we know neither is true. Love remained mortal, while we became eternal. "
44 " Human nature is both predictable and mysterious; prone to great and sudden advances, yet still mired in despicable self-interest. "
45 " Guilt is the idiot cousin of remorse, "
46 " I wonder what life will be like a millennium from now, when the average age will be nearer to one thousand. Will we all be renaissance children, skilled at every art and science, because we’ve had time to master them? Or will boredom and slavish routine plague us even more than it does today, giving us less of a reason to live limitless lives? I dream of the former, but I suspect the latter. "
47 " I choose to be known as scythe Anastasiaafter the youngest member of the family Romanovshe was the product of a corrupt system, and because of that, was denied her very life—as I almost washad she lived who knows what she might have done. perhaps she could have changed the world and redeemed her family name. choose to be scythe Anastasia. I vow to become the change that night have been "
48 " You have three hundred sixty-five days of immunity." And then, looking him in the eye, said, "And I'll be seeing you on day three hundred sixty-six. "
49 " we must always be vigilant, because power comes infected with the only disease left to us: the virus called human nature. "
50 " Death makes the whole world kin. "
51 " I think about religion and how, once we because our own saviors, our own gods, most faiths became irrelevant. What must it have been like to believe in something greater than oneself? To accept imperfection and look to a rising vision of all we could never be? It must have been comforting. It must have lifted people from the mundane, but also justified all sorts of evil. I often wonder if the bright benefit of belief outweighed the darkness its abuse could bring. "
52 " I have become the monster of monsters, he thought as he watched it all burn. The butcher of lions. The executioner of eagles. Then, "
53 " Innocence is doomed to die a senseless death at our own hands, a casualty of the mistakes we can never undo. So we lay to rest the wide-eyed wonder we once thrived upon, replacing it with the scars of which we never speak, too knotted for any amount of technology to repair. "
54 " I love you,” he said. “Same here,” she responded. “Now get lost. "
55 " Perhaps that is why we must, by law, keep a record. A public journal, testifying to those who will never die and those who are yet to be born, as to why we human beings do the things we do. We are instructed to write down not just our deeds but our feelings, because it must be known that we do have feelings. Remorse. Regret. Sorrow too great to bear. Because if we didn't feel those things, what monsters would we be? "
56 " Is that why you’re here?” Ben blurted “To glean one of us?” Scythe Faraday offered an unreadable smile. “I’m here for dinner. "
57 " People used to die naturally. Old age used to be a terminal affliction, not a temporary state. There were invisible killers called “diseases” that broke the body down. Aging couldn’t be reversed, and there were accidents from which there was no return. Planes fell from the sky. Cars actually crashed. There was pain, misery, despair. It’s hard for most of us to imagine a world so unsafe, with dangers lurking in every unseen, unplanned corner. All of that is behind us now, and yet a simple truth remains: People have to die. It "
58 " One apology is enough,” the scythe told the boy. “Especially when it’s genuine. "
59 " I am legend. Yet every day I wish that I was not. "
60 " Nature deemed that to be born was an automatic sentence to death, and then brought about that death with vicious consistency. We "