To see the ocean once is to learn how to miss it. ~Mistress Coyle

The only place you belong is the place you can never go back. And so yer always alone, forever and always.

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.

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

You be as angry as you need to be,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.

You went up a girl and came down a woman.

If you ever see a war," she says, not looking up from her clipboard, "you'll learn that war only destroys. No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors.