As long as I hold it as long as I use it, the knife lives, lives in order to take life, but it has to be commanded, it has to have me to tell it to kill, and it wants to, it wants to plunge and thrust and cut and stab and gouge, but I have to want it to as well, my will has to join with its will. I'm the one who allows it and I'm the one responsible.
Patrick NessThere is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.
Patrick NessLimitations can be hugely creative and hugely inspiring - so long as they are the ones you choose for yourself.
Patrick NessChoices may be unbelievably hard but they're never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that's not how a person with integrity acts.
Patrick NessPeople see stories everywhere...We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn't true...We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.
Patrick NessAnd I know Iโve lost. Everything is lost. Everything is over. โAs the newly appointed President of this fair planet of ours,โ the Mayor says, holding out his hands as if to show me the world for the first time,โ let me be the very first to welcome you to its new capital city.โ โTodd?โ Viola whispers, her eyes closed. I hold her tightly to me. โIโm sorry,โ I whisper to her. โIโm so sorry.โ Weโve run right into a trap. Weโve run right off the end of the world. โWelcome,โ says the Mayor,โ to the New Prentisstown.
Patrick Ness