To live is to fight, to preserve life is to fight everything that man stands for.

Then at the top of the hill, the road forks. Which just figures. "You gotta be kidding." I say. One part of the road goes left, the other goes right. (Well, it's a "Fork" ain't it?)

I wanted so badly for there to be more. I ached for there to be more than my crappy little life.' He shakes his head. 'And there was more. I just couldn't see it.

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.

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?

But,' he thinks, 'it's possible to die before you die.

If a crowd can flinch, they flinch. More than a thousand men flinch under the fist of just one. I don't see what the women do.