I am Todd Hewitt, I think to myself with my eyes closed. I am twelve years and twelve months old. I live in Prentisstown on New World. I will be a man in one month’s time exactly.

Dogs don't got the problems of people. Dogs can be happy any old time.

Too much talking," I say. "Not enough running.

And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.

Midnight passes and I'm twenty-five days and a million years from becoming a man.

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.

Nobody has to tell nobody nothing,” I say, taking another step forward. “You never were a poet, were you, Todd?” he says.