“I wish I had a hundred years, she said, very quietly. A hundred years I could give to you.”

“The answer is that it does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day.”

“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.”

“Four lines, and the world went quiet.I'm sorry for telling everyone about your mum, read the first line.I miss being your friend, read the second.Are you okay? read the third.I see you, read the fourth, with the I underlined about a hundred times.”

“And she says, “Then let’s just take the effing road and get ourselves to Haven.”I smile, a little. “You said effing,” I say. “You actually said the word effing.”

“I am Todd Hewitt, I think to myself with my eyes closed. I am twelve years and twelve months old. I live in Prentisstown on New World. I will be a man in one month’s time exactly.”

“Cept for Ben, who I can’t describe much further without seeming soft and stupid and like a boy, so I won’t, just to say that I never knew my pa, but if you woke up one day and had a choice of picking one from a selecshun, if someone said, here, then, boy, pick who you want, then Ben wouldn’t be the worst choice you could make that morning.”