A book… it’s a world all on its own too. A world made of words, where you live for a while.

Maybe probably ain’t all that comforting a word when it’s maybe yer not dying.

I was born into all that, all that mess, the over-crowded swamp and the over-crowded sematary and the not-crowded-enough town, so I don’t remember nothing, don’t remember a world without Noise. My pa died of sickness before I was born and then my ma died, of course, no surprises there. Ben and Cillian took me in, raised me. Ben says my ma was the last of the women but everyone says that about everyone’s ma. Ben may not be lying, he believes it’s true, but who knows?

Like how stars might sound. Or moons But not mountains. Too floaty for mountains. It's a sound like one planet singing to another, high stretched and full of different voices starting at different notes and sloping down to other different notes but all weaving together in a rope of sound that's sad but not sad and slow but not slow and all singing one word. One word.

Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.

What a sad thing men are. Can’t do nothing good without being so weak we have to mess it up. Can’t build something up without tearing it down.

I wish I had a hundred years, she said, very quietly. A hundred years I could give to you.