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

by Patrick Ness

trying not to think about nothing at all.

He tried to teach me reading and writing, too, but Mayor Prentiss caught wind of it in my Noise one morning and locked Ben up for a week and that was the end of my book-learning and what with all that other stuff to learn and all the working on the farm that still has to be done every day and all the just plain surviving, I never ended up reading too good. Don’t matter. Ain’t nobody in Prentisstown ever gonna write a book.

Men lie, and they lie to theirselves worst of all.

So the thing to remember, the thing that’s most important of all that I might say in this here telling of things is that 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.

When I sit down, he recurls by my legs and falls asleep, farting happily and giving a doggy sigh. Simple to be a dog.

Her voice softens but only a little. “Ben’s gone and Manchee’s gone and my mother and father are gone,” she says. “And I hate all of that. I hate it. But we’re almost at the end of the road. We’re almost there. And if you don’t give up, I don’t give up.”

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