The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1)

by Patrick Ness

Men are Noisy creachers.

I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME

The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.

knowledge is dangerous,”

Everything and nothing. You can’t say everything, so you don’t say nothing.

keep on going means coming back first.”

But a knife ain’t just a thing, is it? It’s a choice, it’s something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don’t. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.

When luck ain’t with you, it’s against you.

“And who might this be then?” he says, pointing the machete at her. And it happens before I even know I’m doing it, I swear. One minute I’m standing there behind everyone and the next thing I know, I’m between Matthew and Viola, I have my knife out pointing at him, my own Noise falling like an avalanche and my mouth saying, “You best take two steps away from her and you best be taking ’em right quick.”

There ain’t nothing good that don’t got real bad waiting to follow it.

There’s only forward, Vi, only outward and up.”

Good dog, good bloody dog.

the lesson of forever and ever is that knowing a man’s mind ain’t knowing the man.

But I wouldn’t be a Prentisstown boy if I couldn’t ignore Noise.

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

“War is a monster,” he says, almost to himself. “War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows.”

Life equals running and when we stop running maybe that’s how we’ll know life is finally finished.

Now that I’ve seen her, I can’t stop seeing her.

“I think maybe everybody falls,” I say. “I think maybe we all do. And I don’t think that’s the asking.” I pull on her arms gently to make sure she’s listening. “I think the asking is whether we get back up again.”

I’m Todd bloody Hewitt.