The Crash of Hennington Quotes

“The world’s ending. —Maybe sometimes it has to.”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“You looked like a half-literate moron in that letter, like an anti-intellectual jackanapes trying to stampede his way into power with all the finesse of a lovestruck buffalo.”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“Jarvis had to keep avoiding the increasing numbers of both rioters and fleeing citizens as well as a number of people in cars with the same idea. He was surprised to feel annoyed. Here was the first honest-to-goodness miracle he was witness to in his entire life as a clergyman and he wasn’t able to see it because he had to keep his eyes on the road. Why were the mysteries of faith so inscrutable?”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“You fuck! You fucking fuck! Nobody fucking … You fuck! Fucking talks to me! Fucking tells me. Tells me. Stupid fuck. ‘Chemically’ fuck! Fuck!”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“Youth is a form of mental illness.”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“How did there get to be ‘sides'? You said the guards were on our ‘side'. How did that happen? How did I end up on a ‘side'? —I can’t really explain. Things just happen. Over time, they accumulate. Bad attracts bad. Good attracts good. Eventually there are sides. The members flux, sometimes the boundaries are gray. Good and bad are sometimes not the point. It happens.”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“This must be insanity. (But I’m as sane as anyone.)”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“In the old story of Pacifism pitted against The Regrettable Use of Force, Jarvis had taken the mildly surprising but by no means unprecedented position of agreeing with Robham’s pacifist principles. Diana had turned to face him from her seat in the seminar, nostrils blazing. —I suppose I can understand your abhorrence to war, but to eliminate all use of force under every circumstance is naïve, suicidally idealistic, and in the most morally repugnant sense shirks adult responsibility. Pacifists allow their consciences to be free while still subsisting on the fruits of war.”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“Eugene turned the key. A sound like a two-story house being shat out the asshole of a zebra ripped through the dashboard.”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“There Are No Ends, Only Changes.”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“But how are you this fine evening? —My arches are falling. —Isn’t that the first line of a sonnet?”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“Forty-seven generations before, the King of the Southerners had stolen a rhinoceros out of the Northern King’s private zoo. (—That’s it? —Wars have started for less. —But that’s stupid. —Precisely.)”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“I don’t understand people who get power and then just give it up. Just say, ‘Oh, what the fuck, I just don’t want it anymore. I’m retiring.”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“Albert got her to her feet. He gathered her few wayward things and delicately placed a hand on an unburnt spot to help her walk. —You’re going to have this two-tone problem for a while. Your backside is as white as virgin pearl. —A moan will have to suffice for a witty rejoinder. —I’ll pretend to be dazzled.”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“Despair was one thing, despair had a component of energy, despair grappled and fought, despair needed you alive to feel its pain, but sadness, sadness was something else altogether. Sadness was a slow vampire. Sadness reached in and uncorked you like a full tub. Sadness was the parasite that killed its host.”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington

“The key is never sheer numbers. The key is the correct catalyst. A pebble can start a landslide and the boulders have no say in the matter as they tumble down the hill.”
― Patrick Ness, The Crash of Hennington