Patrick Ness

“Usually when a man calls a woman a bitch," a voice calls over from a cart pulling up near us at the edge of camp,"its because she's doing something right.”

“The only crime, the only crime is to take a life. There is nothing else.''And that's why you don't fight,'I say.She turns to me sharply. 'To preserve life is to fight everything that man stands for.”

“No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors. You accept things that would appall you at any other time because life has temporarily lost all meaning.”

“Because he KNEW he was doing wrong. He felt the PAIN of his actions'--'But he did not amen them,' shows the Sky. 'The rest are worth as much as their pack animals,' I show, 'but worst is the one who knows better and does NOTHING.”

“No,' Ben says, 'but I believe it. I believe it for you. And that's why it's hope.”

“If they can snuff out that part of you that's good, the part of you that won't kill, then they win, don't you see? If they can do it to you, they can do it to anyone. And they win. They WIN!”

“Like how stars might sound. Or moons But not mountains. Too floaty for mountains. It's a sound like one planet singing to another, high stretched and full of different voices starting at different notes and sloping down to other different notes but all weaving together in a rope of sound that's sad but not sad and slow but not slow and all singing one word. One word.”

“So the good prince was a murderer and the evil queen wasn't a witch after all.”

“It's always nice when two people who don't got no one else find each other as friends.”

“There's so much wonder in the world. Don't let no one tell you otherwise.”

“Cuz when I held you for the first time this morning and fed you from my own body, I felt so much love for you it was almost like pain, almost like I couldn't stand it one longer.”

“And it’s a sad song, Todd, but it’s also a promise. I’ll never deceive you and I’ll never leave you and I promise you this so you can one day promise it to others and know that it’s true.”

“I remember the ache I used to feel when she got too close, how it felt like grief, how it felt like a loss, like I was falling, falling into nothing, how it clenched me up and made me want to weep, made me actually weep.”

“And it hurts her, but it's an okay hurt, but it hurts still, but it's good, but it hurts.”

“Everything that's happened has brought me here, to this place, with this knife in my hand, and something worth saving.”

“And too much informayshun can drive a man mad. Too much informayshun becomes just Noise. And it never, never stops.”

“And I look at her sitting there and she looks across the river and we wait as the dawn fully arrives, each of us knowing.Each of us knowing the other.”

“We run down the right fork, Manchee at our heels, the night and a dusty road stretching out in front of us, an army and a disaster behind us, me and Viola, running side by side.”

“Nobody has to tell nobody nothing,” I say, taking another step forward.“You never were a poet, were you, Todd?” he says.”

“I don’t know what’s ahead,” I say. “I don’t know nothing about nothing but whatever it is, it’s gotta be better than what’s behind. It’s gotta be.”

“It’s a trick Ben taught me to help settle my Noise. You close yer eyes and as clearly and calmly as you can you tell yerself who you are, cuz that’s what gets lost in all that Noise.”

“Time goes on, even when yer not looking.”

“I think maybe everyone falls... I think the asking is whether we get back up again.”

“Worst is the one who knows better and does nothing.”

“Why can't we learn to live with how we are? And whatever anybody chooses is okay by the rest of us?”

“Didn't you finish your chemistry in school?" "You closed the school and burnt all the books." "Ah, so I did.”

“One hundred and fifty years ago, the monster began, this country had become a place of industry. Factories grew on the landscape like weeds. Trees fell, fields were up-ended, rivers blackened. The sky choked on smoke and ash, and the people did, too, spending their days coughing and itching, their eyes turned forever toward the ground. Villages grew into town, towns into cities. And people began to live on the earth rather than within it.”

“Everybody was hoping for something, talking about our new life to come and all that they hoped from it. Fresh air, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Real gravity, instead of the fake kind that broke every now and then (even though no one over fifteen would admit that it was actually really fun when it did). All the wide open spaces we’d have, all the new people we’d meet when we woke them up, ignoring completely what happened to the original settlers, super- confident that we were so much better equipped that nothing bad could possibly happen to us.All this hope, and here I was, right at the very edge of it, looking out into the darkness, the first to see it coming, the first to greet it when we found out what it really looked like.”

“No one ever seems to wonder what happens if it turns out we hate living on a planet? What if the sky’s too big? What if the air stinks? What if we go hungry?’‘And what if the air tastes of honey? What if there’s so much food we all get too fat? What if the sky is so beautiful we don’t get any work done because we’re all looking at it too much?”

“THERE IT IS,’ my mother says, and what she means is that the dot we’ve been nearing for weeks, the one that’s been growing into a larger dot with two smaller dots circling it, has now become even larger than that, growing from a dot to a disc, shining back the light from its sun, until you can see the blue of its oceans, the green of its forests, the white of its polar caps, a circle of colour against the black beyond.”

“If you ever want to see how small you are in the plan of God, just stand at the edge of an ocean”

“What a sad thing men are. Can’t do nothing good without being so weak we have to mess it up. Can’t build something up without tearing itdown.”

“Then she said, with mock horror, "She's going to bring some of her old wigs, if you can believe it." She rubbed her bare head with her free hand. "I'll look like a zombie Margaret Thatcher.”

“Mistress Coyle agreed, and Simone set to work, planning the whole thing with the absolute focus on capturing aSpackle and sending it back with a message of peace.Which seems strange after we’ve killed so many of them to do it, but it’s been obvious since the beginning that wars makeno sense. You kill people to tell them you want to stop killing them.”

“He is worse than the others, I show. He is worst of all of them.Because–Because he knew he was doing wrong. He felt the pain of his actions–But he did not amend them, shows the Sky.The rest are worth as much as their pack animals, I show, but worst is the one who knows better and does nothing.”

“And what other kind of man would you want leading you into battle?” he says, reading my Noise. “What other kind of man is suitable for war?”A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes monsters of men.“Wrong,” says the Mayor. “It’s war that makes us men in the first place. Until there’s war, we are only children.”Another blast of the horn comes roaring down at us, so loud it nearly takes our heads off and it puts the army off its stride for a second or two.We look up the road to the bottom of the hill. We see Spackle torches gathering there to meet us.“Ready to grow up, Todd?” the Mayor asks.”

“But I just put my hand on the back of his neck-And he says, "Viola-?"And I pull myself toward him-And I kiss him.And it feels like, finally.”

“Always," I say to him. "Every time.”

“We just keep on having to save each other", he says. "We ever gonna be even?""I hope not," I say”

“Doing what's right should be easy. It shouldn't be just another big mess like everything else.”

“There ain't nothing good that don't got real bad waiting to follow it.”

“Noise ain't Truth, Noise is what men want to be true, and there's a difference twixt those two things so big that it could ruddy well kill you if you don't watch out.”

“Through Hell or high water.""It'll probably be both.”

“Here I am.Here we are.Here we go.Here is all that matters.”

“Smart boys make useless men.”

“The ability to make fire at will. It allowed us light to see in the darkness, warmth against the cold, a tool to cook our food.’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of the Delta’s engines. ‘Fire is what eventually led to travel across the black beyond, the ability to start a new life on a New World.”

“And here was a man who lived on belief, but who sacrificed it at the first challenge, right when he needed it most.”

“That's another thing about Noise. Everything that's ever happened to you just keeps right on talking, for ever and ever.”

“This is how we are protecting you, by getting you out.”

“What else is there to say?Everything and nothing. You can't say everything, so you don't say nothing.”