Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3)

by Patrick Ness

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.”

all I can think in the middle of so much Noise, all I can think as I hear men die and Spackle die and see them die in Noise even with my eyes shut, all I can think is– Is this what war is? Is this what men want so much? Is this sposed to make them men? Death coming at you with a roar and a scream so fast you can’t do nothing about it–

To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that’s not how a person with integrity acts.”

“In a place of all this beauty and potential,” Bradley says, looking around, “we just repeat the same mistakes. Do we hate paradise so much we have to be sure it becomes a trash heap?”

The Sky rides over to me through the ice falling gently from the clouds above. It comes down like white leaves, already spreading a blanket of itself across the ground, coating us, too, on the battlemores we still ride.

Running towards the Source, seeing me but not even slowing, greeting the Source with so much joy, so much love, that I very nearly had to ride away right then.

Because I could see through the Source’s voice how the Knife punishes himself for his crimes more than I ever could–

I do not feel remarkable, I show. I only feel tired.

Prepare yourselves, I tell the Land. Prepare yourselves for war– NO! the Source shouts again– But his words are lost as water as tall as a city crashes through the valley below us, swallowing everything in its path–

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 it down. It ain’t the Spackle that drove us to the end. It was ourselves.

My heart is broken, broken in a way that will never be healed, broken in a way that feels like it’s going to kill me, too, right here on this stupid, freezing beach–