I remember the ache I used to feel when she got too close, how it felt like grief, how it felt like a loss, like I was falling, falling into nothing, how it clenched me up and made me want to weep, made me actually weep.

I was just trying to stay alive, looking for ways to find you, hoping you hadn't left me behind." "Never," I say. "Not never." He looks back up at me. "I'd never leave you neither." "You promise?" "Cross my heart, hope to die," he says, grinning shyly. "I promise, too," I say and I smile at him. "I ain't never leaving you, Todd Hewitt, not never again.

Time goes on, even when yer not looking.

Flakes of white fall thru the trees and onto the road, catching on our clothes and hair. It's a silent fall and it's weird how it makes everything else seem quiet, too, like it's trying to tell you a secret, a terrible, terrible secret.

Here I am. Here we are. Here we go. Here is all that matters.

That's another thing about Noise. Everything that's ever happened to you just keeps right on talking, for ever and ever.

It's not that you should never love something so much that it can control you. It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled. It's not a weakness. It's your best strength.