Patrick Ness · 479 pages
Rating: (121.7K votes)
“We are the choices we make.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“Without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“Here's what I think," I say and my voice is stronger and thoughts are coming, thoughts that trickle into my noise like whispers of truth. "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.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“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. ”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.
About anything.
"Need a poo, Todd."
"Shutup, Manchee."
"Poo. Poo, Todd."
"I said shut it.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare in the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“War is like 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.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“You can't say everything, so you don't say nothing.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“Men lie, and they lie to theirselves worst of all.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“I promised to keep on going but maybe keep on going means coming back first.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“Knowledge is dangerous and men lie and the world changes, whether I want it to or not.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“When luck ain't with you, it's against you.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“You starting to feel hope yet?" Viola asks, her voice curious.
"No," I say, fuddling my noise. "You?"
Her eyebrows are up but she shakes her head. "No, No."
"But we're going anyway."
"Oh, yeah," Viola says. "Hell or high water."
"It'll probably be both," I say.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“Life equals running and when we stop running maybe that's how we'll know life is finally finished.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“And she says, “Then let’s just take the effing road and get ourselves to Haven.”
I smile, a little. “You said effing,” I say. “You actually said the word effing.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“Don't deceive me. Never leave me.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“I rub the ears of my dog, my stupid goddam ruddy great dog that I never wanted but who hung around anyway and who followed me thru the swamp and who bit Aaron when he was trying to choke me and who found Viola when she was lost and who's licking my hand with his little pink tongue and whose eye is still mostly squinted shut from where Mr. Prentiss Jr. kicked him and whose tail is way way shorter from where Matthew Lyle cut it off when my dog - my dog - went after a man with a machete to save me and who's right there when I need pulling back from the darkness I fall into and who tells me who I am whenever I forget.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“And I know I’ve lost.
Everything is lost.
Everything is over.
“As the newly appointed President of this fair planet of ours,” the Mayor says, holding out his hands as if to show me the world for the first time,” let me be the very first to welcome you to its new capital city.”
“Todd?” Viola whispers, her eyes closed.
I hold her tightly to me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her. “I’m so sorry.”
We’ve run right into a trap.
We’ve run right off the end of the world.
“Welcome,” says the Mayor,” to the New Prentisstown.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“A knife is only as good as the one who wields it.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“There's so much wonder in the world. Don't let no one tell you otherwise.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“He's a woman.
He's a grown woman
He's a old woman.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“Too much talking," I say. "Not enough running.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“Manchee comes outta the bushes and sits down next to me cuz I’ve stopped right there in the middle of a trail. He looks around to see what I might be seeing and then he says, ”Good poo, Todd.”
”I’m sure it was, Manchee.”
I’d better not get another ruddy dog when my birthday comes. What I want this year is a hunting knife like the one Ben carries on the back of his belt. Now that’s a present for a man.
“Poo,” Manchee’s says quietly.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.
About anything.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from The Knife of Never Letting Go
“Worship me, she says, worship the mistery of the bleeding goddess, and you do it. You stop at nothing. You lick it. You consume it. You digest it. She penetrates you.
What next, David? A glass of her urine. How long before you would have begged for her feces? I'm not against it because it's unhygienic.
I'm not against it because it's disgusting. I'm against it because it's falling in love. The only obession everybody wants: 'love'. People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open. She was a foreign body introduced into your wholeness. And for a year and a half you struggled to incorporate it. But you'll never be whole until you expel it. You either get rid of it or incorporate it through self-distortion.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal
“So, look, you can't leave," Doug said, sitting straight up and turning towards her. "if you do, Miller's gonna revert and Caleb and Ian are gonna ride roughshod and Sean'll go back to being ghost brother and Finn..."
Megan's heart slipped. "Finn what?"
"Finn will be destroyed," Doug said, looking her in the eye. "You got that dude all up in a twist, you know that, right?"
"What does that even mean?" Megan asked.
"All's I know is, he found out you left and he locked himself in the shed and barricaded the door. No one's seen him since," Doug said. "When I bolted, Sean and Evan were trying to boost Caleb up onto the roof so he could look through the skylight and make sure the kid wasn't dead or something."
Megan swallowed hard. "Wow.”
― quote from Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys
“You come up and read books?” asked Gregor. “Read them, eat them, whatever mood strikes me,”
― Suzanne Collins, quote from Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane
“that's ONE thing that's wrong with intellectuals and writers - they don't feel a hell of a lot except their own comfort or their own pain. which is normal but shitty.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness
“I am not a prisoner of my reason.
- Bad Blood”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
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