There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.
Men do monstrous things but if you call a man a monster you have absolved yourself of blame. You don’t have to think that you might ever do these things. I don’t think that’s true.
They open up the world. Because knowledge is useless if you don’t know how to find it, if you don’t even know where to begin to look. – on librarians.
This is what war does. Right here, in my hands. This is war.
And then his noise falls completely silent- And he stops struggling- And looking right into my eyes- He dies. My Todd dies.
The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.
That’s another thing about Noise. Everything that’s ever happened to you just keeps right on talking, for ever and ever.
Stories are the wildest things of all. Stories chase and bite and hunt.
Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.
War makes monsters out of men.
Knowledge is dangerous and men lie and the world changes, whether I want it to or not.
And it feels like, finally.
You went up a girl and came down a woman.
I’ll find you- Keep calling for me, Viola- Cuz here I come.
Girls are small and polite and smiley. They wear dresses and their hair is long and it’s pulled into shapes behind their heads or on either side.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Everything that’s happened has brought me here, to this place, with this knife in my hand, and something worth saving.