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

by Patrick Ness

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.

That’s the thing, tho. Noise is noise. It’s crash and clatter and it usually adds up to one big mash of sound and thought and picture and half the time it’s impossible to make any sense of it at all. Men’s minds are messy places and Noise is like the active, breathing face of that mess. It’s what’s true and what’s believed and what’s imagined and what’s fantasized and it says one thing and a completely opposite thing at the same time and even tho the truth is definitely in there, how can you tell what’s true and what’s not when yer getting everything?

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

I keep breathing and these thoughts start coming. They come all uninvited, don’t they?

I’m just thinking it, all right? The thoughts rush in, that’s all.

There’s only forward, Vi, only outward and up.” “There’s only forward,” I repeat. “Outward and up,” she says.

But soon folk realized there was nothing to be done about it so for a while we all tried to live with it the best we could, found different ways to deal with it, different communities taking their own paths.

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.” He’s looking at me now. “And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.”

Doing what’s right should be easy. It shouldn’t be just another big mess like everything else.

Life ain’t fair. It ain’t. Not never. It’s pointless and stupid and there’s only suffering and pain and people who want to hurt you. You can’t love nothing or no one cuz it’ll all be taken away or ruined and you’ll be left alone and constantly having to fight, constantly having to run just to stay alive. There’s nothing good in this life. Not nothing good nowhere. What’s the effing point?

We go on. And on.

hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it’s dangerous, too, that it’s painful and risky, that it’s making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?

“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.”

Now there’s only a tiny light against the darkness.

Whatever’s going to happen next can wait.