β
You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
You nicked-named my daughter after the Lock Ness Monster!
β
β
Stephenie Meyer (Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, #4))
β
It's not that you should never love something so much that it can control you.
It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.
It's not a weakness.
It's your best strength.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
Stories are wild creatures, the monster said. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
We are the choices we make.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Don't think you haven't lived long enough to have a story to tell.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Stories are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new.
β
β
E.E. Cummings
β
If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.
β
β
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
β
Without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
In this world of numbness and information overload, the ability to feel, my boy, is a rare gift indeed.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
I wish I had a hundred years, she said, very quietly. A hundred years I could give to you.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
To say you have no choice is to relieve yourself of responsibility.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
You were merely wishing for the end of pain, the monster said. Your own pain. An end to how it isolated you. It is the most human wish of all.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
It's not how we fall. It's how we get back up again.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
Stories don't always have happy endings."
This stopped him. Because they didn't, did they? That's one thing the monster had definitely taught him. Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn't expect.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
There was once an invisible man who had grown tired of being unseen. It was not that he was actually invisible. It was that people had become used to not seeing him.
And if no one sees you, are you really there at all?"
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
A bookβ¦ itβs a world all on its own too. A world made of words, where you live for a while.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Conor held tightly onto his mother.
And by doing so, he could finally let her go.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
But a knife ain't just a thing, is it? It's a choice, it's something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don't. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
If you speak the truth, the monster whispered in his ear, you will be able to face whatever comes.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Faith with proof is no faith at all.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
War makes monsters out of men.
β
β
Patrick Ness
β
The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.
About anything.
"Need a poo, Todd."
"Shutup, Manchee."
"Poo. Poo, Todd."
"I said shut it.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Here's what I think," I say and my voice is stronger and thoughts are coming, thoughts that trickle into my noise like whispers of truth. "I think maybe everybody falls," I say. "I think maybe we all do. And I don't think that's the asking."
I pull on her arms gently to make sure she's listening.
"I think the asking is whether we get back up again.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare in the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Know yourself and go in swinging.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
But what is a dream, Conor O'Malley? the monster said, bending down so it's face was close to Conor's. Who is to say that it is not everything else that is the dream?
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Choices 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.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
War is like a monster," he says, almost to himself. "War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows." He's looking at me now. "And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Iβll find youβ
Keep calling for me, Violaβ
Cuz here I come.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
Real life is only ever just real life. Messy. What it means depends on how you look at it. The only thing youβve got to do is find a way to live there.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
You can't say everything, so you don't say nothing.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with skepticism, said the monster.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Cuz how do you know yer alive if you don't hurt?
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
You be as angry as you need to be,β she said. βDonβt 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.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Men lie, and they lie to theirselves worst of all.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Because humans are complicated beasts, the monster said. How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour? How can an apothecary be evil-tempered but right-thinking? How can a parson be wrong-thinking but good-hearted? How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?
"I don't know," Connor shrugged, exhausted. "Your stories never made any sense to me."
The answer is that it does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day. You wanted her to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her. Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons? the monster said. You think I have coming walking out of time and earth itself to teach you a lesson in niceness?
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
You said we all want there to be more than this! Well, there's always more than this. There's always something you don't know.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
Many things that are true feel like a cheat. Kingdoms get the princes they deserve, farmersβ daughters die for no reason, and sometimes witches merit saving. Quite often, actually. Youβd be surprised.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
I promised to keep on going but maybe keep on going means coming back first.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
And if one day,' she said, really crying now, 'you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to that is was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
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.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
Feelings don't try to kill you, even the painful ones. Anxiety is a feeling grown too large. A feeling grown aggressive and dangerous. You're responsible for its consequences, you're responsible for treating it. But...you're not responsible for causing it. You're not morally at fault for it. No more than you would be for a tumor.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this weekβs end of the world and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
We share out craziness, our neuroses, our little bit of screwed-up-ness that comes from our family. We share it. And it feels like love.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
To live is to fight, to preserve life is to fight everything that man stands for.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
There's always beauty, if you know where to look.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness.
β
β
Colson Whitehead (The Nickel Boys)
β
Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
Knowledge is dangerous and men lie and the world changes, whether I want it to or not.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
His noise is getting quieter, but I can still see it there still-
See how he feels the skin of my hand against his, see how he wants to take it and press it against his mouth, how he wants to breathe in the smell of me and how beautiful I look to him, how strong after all that illness, and how he wants to just lightly touch my neck, just there, and how he wants to take me in his arms and-
"Oh, God," he says, looking away suddenly. "Viola, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"
But I just put my hand to the back of his neck-
And he says, "Viola-?"
And I pull myself towards him-
And I kiss him.
And it feels like, finally.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
Yer the only friend I got, pigpiss... Ain't that the biggest tragedy you ever heard?
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
Not everyone has to be the Chosen One. Not everyone has to be the guy who saves the world. Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing things that are great for them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people properly. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense but trying to find a way to be happy anyway.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
You discover how confounding the world is when you try to draw it. You look at a car, and you try to see its car-ness, and youβre like an immigrant to your own world. You donβt have to travel to encounter weirdness. You wake up to it.
β
β
Shaun Tan
β
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.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
When luck ain't with you, it's against you.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Four lines, and the world went quiet.
I'm sorry for telling everyone about your mum, read the first line.
I miss being your friend, read the second.
Are you okay? read the third.
I see you, read the fourth, with the
I
underlined about a hundred times.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
What is it that inspires you? What do you love to do? What would you do for free? At the beginning of my busi-ness career, my why was to become a millionaire, not a good why! And why not? Because that is an aspiration rather than a why. Aspirations, I have found, wonβt fuel me when the going gets tough. But a true βwhyβ will.
β
β
Richard Polak
β
Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn't expect.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Worst is the one who knows better and does nothing.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
It's not the mistakes I made but how I responded to them
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
Do we hate paradise so much we need to make sure it becomes a trash heap?
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
I did not come to heal her, the monster said. I came to heal you.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
ohmygoodNESS!
β
β
P.C. Cast
β
We are the choices we make. And have to make. We arenβt anything else.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
Life equals running and when we stop running maybe that's how we'll know life is finally finished.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
You're never more alive than in battle."
"Never more dead after," I say.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
Conor was no longer invisible. They all saw him now.
But he was further away than ever.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
The mistake of every young person is to think they're the only ones who see darkness and hardship in the world."
...
"The mistake of every adult, though, is to think darkness and hardship aren't important to young people because we'll grow out of it. Who cares if we will? Life is happening to us now, just like it's happening to you.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
But,' he thinks, 'it's possible to die before you die.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
Knowledge is dangerous.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
And here was a man who lived on belief, but who sacrificed it at the first challenge, right when he needed it most.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Don't deceive me. Never leave me.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
The inclination to believe in the fantastic may strike some as a failure in logic, or gullibility, but itβs really a gift. A world that might have Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster is clearly superior to one that definitely does not.
β
β
Chris Van Allsburg
β
Ow, Todd? Ow?
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
And she says, βThen letβs just take the effing road and get ourselves to Haven.β
I smile, a little. βYou said effing,β I say. βYou actually said the word effing.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
People 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.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
Belief is half of all healing.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest.
If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not interested or even involved.
β
β
Jack Kerouac (Book of Sketches)
β
And it feels like, finally.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
Because I'm not blind to how Harry works, you know," she said. "A bully with charisma and top marks is still a bully." She sighed, annoyed. "He'll probably end up Prime Minister one day. God help us all.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Life ain't fair.
It ain't.
Not never.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes Monsters of Men.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
Can I ask you a question? You know with vampires and werewolves and goblins and things, is there any mythological creature that doesn't actually exist?"
"Of course," he replied. "The unicorn and the leprechaun would be would be the two main ones. The Loch Ness Monster isn't real, either, that's just someone called Bert.
β
β
Derek Landy (Kingdom of the Wicked (Skulduggery Pleasant, #7))
β
What's important is that you stay true to yourself. Because when you enter the real world, the most valuable thing you can bring is all your you-ness. The world doesn't need any more hot chicks or tough guys or smooth talkers - the world needs more you. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
β
β
Bo Burnham
β
People ask for what they need in different ways. Sometimes by not even asking for it at all.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
If you fall down those stairs and break both of your legs, don't come running to me!
β
β
Louise Rennison (Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me? (Confessions of Georgia Nicolson, #10))
β
A knife is only as good as the one who wields it.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
War makes monsters of men, you once said to me Todd. Well, so does too much knowledge. Too much knowledge of your fellow man, too much knowledge of his weakness, his pathetic greed and vanity, and how laughably easy it is to control him.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
You starting to feel hope yet?" Viola asks, her voice curious.
"No," I say, fuddling my noise. "You?"
Her eyebrows are up but she shakes her head. "No, No."
"But we're going anyway."
"Oh, yeah," Viola says. "Hell or high water."
"It'll probably be both," I say.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
You know that your truth, the one that you hide⦠is the thing you are most afraid of.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
You spawny-eyed pig-faced wazzock
β
β
Mark A. Cooper (Archie Wilson & The Beasts of Loch Ness (Volume 1))
β
I still love the book-ness of books, the smell of books: I am a book fetishistβbooks to me are the coolest and sexiest and most wonderful things there are.
β
β
Neil Gaiman
β
There's so much wonder in the world. Don't let no one tell you otherwise.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Usually when a man calls a woman a bitch," a voice calls over from a cart pulling up near us at the edge of camp,"its because she's doing something right.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.
Aaronβs Noise roars up in red and black.
The current takes us on.
βIβm sorry!β I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I canβt barely breathe. βIβm sorry, Manchee!β
βTodd?β he barks, confused and scared and watching me leave him behind. βTodd?β
βManchee!β I scream.
Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.
βMANCHEE!β
βTodd?β
And Aaron wrenches his arms and thereβs a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.
And the pain is too much itβs too much itβs too much and my hands are on my head and Iβm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness thatβs inside of me.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
And then his noise falls completely silent-
And he stops struggling-
And looking right into my eyes-
He dies.
My Todd dies.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
So we forgive each other?" The crooked smile climbs up one more time. "Again?"
And I look right into his eyes, right into him as far as I can see, because I want him to hear me, I want him to hear me with everything I mean and feel and say.
"Always," I say to him. "Every time.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
Who am I? the monster repeated, still roaring. I am the spine that the mountains hang upon! I am the tears that the rivers cry! I am the lungs that breathe the wind! I am the wolf that kills the stag, the hawk that kills the mouse, the spider that kills the fly! I am the stag, the mouse and the fly that are eaten! I am the snake of the world devouring its tail! I am everything untamed and untameable! It brought Conor up close to its eye. I am thils wild earth, come for you, Conor O'Malley.
"You look like a tree," Conor said.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
They're your parents. They're meant to love you because. Never in spite.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Release)
β
It was solitude, but it was solitude that wasn't lonely. Solitude that could sort things out. And he hadn't had that in ages.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
You notice that he does not ask, Where am I?" says the Mayor's voice, moving out there, somewhere. "His first words are, Where is she? And his Noise says the same. Interesting.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
Except I didn't say eff
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Things change, but they stay the same.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
The answer is that it does not matter what you think, the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Here is the boy, drowning.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
He's a woman.
He's a grown woman
He's a old woman.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
I feel like I'm way down this deep, deep hole and I'm looking up and all there is is this little dot of light and I have to shout at the top of my lungs for anyone to hear me and even when I do, I say the wrong thing or they don't really listen or they're just humouring me.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
I rub the ears of my dog, my stupid goddam ruddy great dog that I never wanted but who hung around anyway and who followed me thru the swamp and who bit Aaron when he was trying to choke me and who found Viola when she was lost and who's licking my hand with his little pink tongue and whose eye is still mostly squinted shut from where Mr. Prentiss Jr. kicked him and whose tail is way way shorter from where Matthew Lyle cut it off when my dog - my dog - went after a man with a machete to save me and who's right there when I need pulling back from the darkness I fall into and who tells me who I am whenever I forget.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Too much talking," I say. "Not enough running.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Stories donβt end with the writers, however many started the race.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
You love him," he says. Not an asking, just a fact.
"I do," I say. Also a fact.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
We don't say nothing more. What else is there to say? Everything and nothing. You can't say everything, so you don't say nothing.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
He was still alive.
Which was the worst thing that could have happened.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.
About anything.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
There is an ancient conversation going on between mosses and rocks, poetry to be sure. About light and shadow and the drift of continents. This is what has been called the "dialect of moss on stone - an interface of immensity and minute ness, of past and present, softness and hardness, stillness and vibrancy, yin and yan.
β
β
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses)
β
Cuz that's it -
That's the nasty, nasty secret of war -
When yer winning -
When yer winning, it's effing thrilling -
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
You went up a girl and came down a woman.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
Doing what's right should be easy. It shouldn't be just another big mess like everything else.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
And a part of you wished it would just end, said the monster, even if it meant losing her.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Who will remember Todd?
Who will remember what he did?
Todd -
Todd -
And my heart breaks even more -
Breaks forever -
And I fall to my knees in the snow and sand -
And I yell out, wordless and empty -
And I drop the weapon.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
Who cares even if I didn't?!" Conor shouted back. "They're just stupid berries. Woo-hoo, so scary. Oh, please, please, save me from the berries!"
The monster looked at him quizzically. How strange, it said. The words you say tell me you are scared of the berries, but your actions seems to suggest otherwise.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
To see the ocean once is to learn how to miss it. ~Mistress Coyle
β
β
Patrick Ness
β
Ah, well, then you've never stood on a beach as the waves came crashing in, the water stretching out from you until it's beyond sight, moving and blue and alive and so much bigger than even the black beyond seems because the ocean hides what it contains.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
Life does not have to go how you think it will,β Tomasz says. βNot even when you are very sure what is going to happen.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
But I don't care what you think, not about these things anyway. If you don't think they're real or important or you think that we'll all grow out of this nonsense, well, that's not really my business. I can't tell you what's real for you. But in return, you can't say what's real for me either. I get to choose. Not you.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
He looks up and the loss in his Noise is so great it feels like I'm standing on the edge of an abyss, that I'm about to fall down into him, into blackness so empty and lonely there'd never be a way out.
"Todd," I say again, a catch in my voice. "On the ledge, under the waterfall, do you remember what you said to me? Do you remember what you said to save me?"
He's shaking his head slowly. "I've done terrible things, Viola. Terrible things-"
"We all fall, you said." I'm gripping his hand now. "We all fall but that's not what matters. What matters is picking yourself up again.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
What's important is that I know how much you worry about shit. And what's also important is that I know a big part of your worry is that, no matter what group of friends you're in, no matter how long you've known them, you always assume you're the least-wanted person there. The one everyone else could do without.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
It's always darkest before the dawn, Todd.β
I look at him, baffled. βNo, it ain't! What kinda stupid saying is that? It's always lightest before the dawn!
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
The green things of this world are just wondrous, arenβt they?β his mother went on. βWe work so hard to get rid of them when sometimes theyβre the very thing that saves us.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
What is this place? Jurassic Park?
β
β
Mark A. Cooper (Archie Wilson & The Beasts of Loch Ness (Volume 1))
β
Just because we mess up doesnβt mean all the lessons we learned are undone. Healing can be imperfect.
β
β
Jonathan Van Ness (Over the Top: A Raw Journey to Self-Love)
β
As destruction goes, the monster said behind him, this is all remarkably pitiful.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
The lesson of forever and ever is that knowing a man's mind ain't knowing the man.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
He wanted something, he realizes now. Wanted an answer other than the ones heβd been given. Wanted to find out this whole world had some purpose, some particular purpose. For him.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
We can save the world," I say, trying to smile. "You and me.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
Viola?
Keep calling for meβ
And Iβll keep searching for youβ
And Iβll find youβ
You bet yer life on itβ
Iβll find youβ
Keep calling for me, Violaβ
Cuz here I come.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
Never pass up the chance to be kissing someone. It's the worst kind of regret.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Release)
β
We're just as screwed up and brave and false and loyal and wrong and right as anyone else.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
you can eff off, too," I say, except I don't say eff, I say what 'eff' stands for.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didnβt choose them, I donβt fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I donβt keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect.
β
β
Mary Oliver (Upstream: Selected Essays)
β
What a sad thing men are. Canβt do nothing good without being so weak we have to mess it up. Canβt build something up without tearing it
down.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
Never trust a politician, Todd. They have no fixed center, so you can never believe them.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
And you," he says, "you need to talk to your boy." He lifts my chin. "And if he needs saving, then you save him. Isn't that what you told me you did for each other?"
I let go a few more tears but then I nod. "Over and over again.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
And yeah, I know most people would think it weird that two guy friends touch as much as we do, but when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too. This is how we work. I hope you get to choose your family and I hope it means as much to you as mine does to me.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
You canβt divorce Margo the person from Margo the body. You canβt see one without seeing the other. You looked at Margoβs eyes and you saw both their blueness and their Margo-ness. In the end, you could not say that Margo Roth Spiegelman was fat, or that she was skinny, any more than you can say that the Eiffel Tower is or is not lonely. Margoβs beauty was a kind of sealed vessel of perfection β uncracked and uncrackable.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
You always assume you're the least-wanted person there. The one everyone else could do without.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
Many things that are true feel like a cheat.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
But there are harder things than being invisible, it said.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Because even the one you hate leaves an absence when they go.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
But it's a tradition, as if that alone is reason enough. Slavery and buying your wife were traditions, too.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
It was so much easier to be loved than to have to do any of the desperate work of loving.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Release)
β
If one of us falls, we all fall.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
There ain't nothing good that don't got real bad waiting to follow it.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Viola?" he says.
And I turn to look at him -
And when I do, I can hear everything he's thinking.
Everything.
Clearer than before, clearer than seems possible -
And I'm not even sure I'm supposed to, but I look him in the eyes and I see it -
In the middle of everything he's feeling -
Even after we fought -
Even after I doubted him -
Even after I hurt him -
I see how much he loves me.
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
That's the thing I'm learning about being thrown out on yer own. Nobody does nothing for you. If you don't change it, it don't get changed.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
No, life didn't always go how you thought it might.
Sometimes it didn't make any sense at all.
You've just got to find a way to live there anyway...
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
As Confucius once said, 'He who does nothing is the one who does nothing.'"
Gabby pondered the words, the furrowed her brow. "did Confucius really say that?"
Sunglasses in place, Stephanie managed the tiniest of shrugs. "No, but who cared? The point is, they handled, and most likely they found some sort of self-satisfaction in their industrious-ness. Who am I to deprive them of that?
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Choice)
β
If the world wants you, it's gonna keep on coming till it gets you. And who am I that can fix it? Who am I that can change this if the world wants it so badly? Who am I to stop the end of the world if it keeps on coming?
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
It felt like waiting for something to happen. Which has to be the worst part of being young. So many of your decisions aren't yours; they're made by other people. Sometimes they're made badly by other people. Sometimes they're made by other people who have no idea what the consequences of those decisions might be. The bastards.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
β
...he prayed fundamentally as a gesture of love for what had gone and would go and could be loved in no other way. When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another, and out of this Saeed felt it might be possible, in the face of death, to believe in humanity's potential for building a better world, so he prayed as a lament, as a consolation, and as a hope....
β
β
Mohsin Hamid (Exit West)
β
But imagine thereβs this thing that always sits there in the room with you. And everyone knows itβs there and no one will ever say a single goddamn word about it until it becomes like an extra person living in your house that you have to make room for. And if you bring it up, they pretend they donβt know what youβre talking about.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
To search for power within myself means I must be willing to move through being afraid to whatever lies beyond. If I look at my most vulnerable places and acknowledge the pain I have felt, I can remove the source of that pain from my enemies' arsenals. My history cannot be used to feather my enemies' arrows then, and that lessens their power over me. Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself.
β
β
Audre Lorde
β
After he killed the farmer's daughter, said the monster, the prince lay down next to her and returned to sleep. When he awoke, he acted out a pantomime should anyone be watching. But also, it may surprise you to learn, for himself. The monster's branches creaked. Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Spackle!β Manchee barks, tho heβs too chicken to attack now that Iβve held back. βSpackle! Spackle! Spackle!β
βShut up, Manchee,β I say.
βSpackle!β
βI said shut up!β I shout, which stops him.
βSpackle?β Manchee says, unsure of things now.
I swallow, trying to get rid of the pressure in my throat, the unbelieveable sadness that comes and comes as I look at it looking back at me. Knowledge is dangerous and men lie and the world keeps changing, whether I want it to or not.
Cuz, it ainβt a Spackle.
βItβs a girl,β I say.
Itβs a girl.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
HERE
Itβs-
Can I say?
Itβs like the song of a family where everythingβs always all right, itβs a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, itβs a song thatβll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart thatβs broken, it fixes.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
You must speak the truth and you must speak it now, Conor O'Malley. Say it. You must.
Conor shook his head again, his mouth clamped shut tight, but he could feel a burning in his chest, like a fire someone had lit there, a miniature sun, blazing away and burning him from the inside.
βIt'll kill me if I do,β he gasped.
It will kill you if you do not, the monster said. You must say it.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
He is sorry-
For everything-
For Prentisstown-
For Viola-
For Ben-
For every failure and every wrong-
For letting his pa down-
And he's looking up at me-
And he's begging me-
He's begging me-
Like I'm the only one who can forgive him-
Like it's only me who's got the power-
Todd?-
Please-
And all I can say is "Davy-"
And the fright and the terror in his Noise is too much-
It's too much-
And then it stops.
Davy slumps, eyes still open, eyes still staring back at me, eyes still asking (I swear) for me to forgive him.
And he lies there, still.
Davy Prentiss is dead.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
You won't," says the Mayor, smiling again. "Everyone knows you aren't a killer, Todd."
He pushes Viola forward again -
She calls out from the pain of it -
Viola, I think -
Viola -
I grit my teeth and raise the rifle -
I cock it -
And I say what's true -
"I would kill to save her," I say.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
He's seeing the actual Milky Way streaked across the sky. The whole of his entire galaxy, right there in front of him. Billions and billions of stars. Billions and billions of worlds. All of them, all of those seemingly endless possibilities, not fictional, but real, out there, existing, right now. There is so much more out there than just the world he knows, so much more than his tiny Washington town, so much more than even London. Or England. Or hell, for that matter.
So much more that he'll never see. So much more that he'll never get to. So much that he can only glimpse enough of to know that it's forever beyond his reach.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
Seth,β she says, βwherever you are, itβs okay. You can come back from it. Whatever happened to you down there, whatever the world looks like now, thatβs not how it always looks. Thatβs not how itβs always going to look. Thereβs more. Thereβs always more. Whatever you see, wherever you are, weβre still here with you. Me and Tommy.
β
β
Patrick Ness (More Than This)
β
He was greedy and rude and bitter, but he was still a healer. The parson, though, what was he? He was nothing. Belief is half of all healing. Belief in the cure, belief in the future that awaits. And here was a man who lived on belief, but who sacrificed it at the first challenge, right when he needed it most. He believed selfishly and fearfully. And it took the lives of his daughters.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,βa world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at oneβs self through the eyes of others, of measuring one by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,βan American, a Negro... two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, β this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.
β
β
W.E.B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk)
β
But what he's forgetting," she says. "What he's forgotting is that me and Todd, we ran halfway across this planet together, by ourselves. We beat his craziest preacher. We outran an entire army and survived being shot and beaten and chased and we bloody well stayed alive this whole time without being blown up or tortured to death or dying in battle or anything."
She takes her hand of Lee so she's balancing just against me.
"Me and Todd? Together against the Mayor?" She smiles. "He doesn't stand a chance.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
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.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
And I know Iβve lost.
Everything is lost.
Everything is over.
βAs the newly appointed President of this fair planet of ours,β the Mayor says, holding out his hands as if to show me the world for the first time,β let me be the very first to welcome you to its new capital city.β
βTodd?β Viola whispers, her eyes closed.
I hold her tightly to me.
βIβm sorry,β I whisper to her. βIβm so sorry.β
Weβve run right into a trap.
Weβve run right off the end of the world.
βWelcome,β says the Mayor,β to the New Prentisstown.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
I wonder why Steven wasnβt at swimming club tonight?β Archie asked.
βHeβs caught bronchitis,β Mrs Akran said.
Imran thought for a second before replying. βI would like to catch a dinosaur too. I wonder what he feeds it?β
Archie looked at his friend his face looked as if he was in pain before he burst out laughing. βImran youβre tragic. Bronchitis is like a bad cold itβs not a type of dinosaur.
β
β
Mark A. Cooper (Archie Wilson & The Beasts of Loch Ness)
β
One hundred and fifty years ago, the monster began, this country had become a place of industry. Factories grew on the landscape like weeds. Trees fell, fields were up-ended, rivers blackened. The sky choked on smoke and ash, and the people did, too, spending their days coughing and itching, their eyes turned forever toward the ground. Villages grew into town, towns into cities. And people began to live on the earth rather than within it.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
She tried to kill you, Viola. She tried to blow you up... You don't owe her nothing,' he says.
But I feel his arms on me and I'm realizing things don't seem so impossible anymore. I feel Todd touching me and there's anger rising in my gut but it's not at him and I grunt and I pull myself up again, leaning on him to keep me there as I stand. 'I do owe her,' I say. 'I owe her the look on her face when she sees me alive.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
Manchee comes outta the bushes and sits down next to me cuz Iβve stopped right there in the middle of a trail. He looks around to see what I might be seeing and then he says, βGood poo, Todd.β
βIβm sure it was, Manchee.β
Iβd better not get another ruddy dog when my birthday comes. What I want this year is a hunting knife like the one Ben carries on the back of his belt. Now thatβs a present for a man.
βPoo,β Mancheeβs says quietly.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
Because humans are complicated beasts, the monster said. How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour? How can an apothecary be evil-tempered but right-thinking? How can a parson be wrong-thinking but good-hearted? How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Neither agreeable nor disagreeable," I answered. "It just is."
Istigkeit β wasn't that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? "Is-ness." The Being of Platonic philosophy β except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were β a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence.
β
β
Aldous Huxley (The Doors of Perception)
β
VIOLA
Cuz she's here -
She came -
She came for me -
And she calls my name -
And I feel her strength coursing thru my Noise like a fire -
And the Mayor staggers back like he's been punched in the face by a row of houses -
"Ah, yes," he grunts, his hand to his head. "Your tower of strength has arrived."
"Todd!" I hear her call again -
And I take it and I use it -
Cuz I can feel her there, riding to the end of the world to find me, to save me if I needed saving -
Which I did -
β
β
Patrick Ness (Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3))
β
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."
He couldn't look at her. He just couldn't.
"And if, one day," she said, really crying now, "you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to know that it was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud. All right?"
He still couldn't look at her. He couldn't raise his head, it felt so heavy. He was bent in two, like he was being torn right down through his middle.
But he nodded.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
Fundamentalist Christianity: fascinating. These people actually believe that the world is twelve thousand years old. Swear to God. Based on what? I asked them.
"Well, we looked at all the people in the Bible and we added 'em up all the way back to Adam and Eve, their ages? Twelve thousand years."
"Well, how fucking scientific, OK. I didn't know that you'd gone to so much trouble there. That's good. You believe the world's twelve thousand years old?"
"That's right."
"OK, I got one word to ask you, a one word question, ready?"
"Uh huh."
"Dinosaurs."
You know, the world's twelve thousand years old and dinosaurs existed, and existed in that time, you'd think it would been mentioned in the fucking Bible at some point:
And O, Jesus and the disciples walked to Nazareth. But the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus... with a splinter in its paw. And the disciples did run a-screamin'. "What a big fucking lizard, Lord!"
"I'm sure gonna mention this in my book," Luke said.
"Well, I'm sure gonna mention it in my book," Matthew said.
But Jesus was unafraid. And he took the splinter from the brontosaurus paw, and the brontosaurus became his friend. And Jesus sent him to Scotland where he lived in a loch, O so many years, attracting fat American families with their fat fuckin' dollars to look for the Loch Ness Monster. And O the Scots did praise the Lord: "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!"
Twelve thousand years old. But I actually asked this guy, "OK, dinosaur fossils-- how does that fit into your scheme of life? What's the deal?" He goes:
"God put those here to test our faith."
"I think God put you here to test my faith, dude. I think I've figured this out."
Does that-- That's what this guy said. Does that bother anyone here? The idea that God might be fucking with our heads? Anyone have trouble sleeping restfully with that thought in their head? God's running around burying fossils: "Ho ho! We'll see who believes in me now, ha ha! I'm a prankster God. I am killing me, ho ho ho!" You know? You die, you go to St. Peter:
"Did you believe in dinosaurs?"
"Well, yeah. There were fossils everywhere. (trapdoor opens) Aaaaarhhh!"
"You fuckin' idiot! Flying lizards? You're a moron. God was fuckin' with you!"
"It seemed so plausible, aaaaaahh!"
"Enjoy the lake of fire, fucker!"
They believe this. But you ever notice how people who believe in Creationism usually look pretty unevolved. Eyes really close together, big furry hands and feet? "I believe God created me in one day." Yeah, looks like he rushed it.
Such a weird belief. Lots of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he's gonna want to see a fucking cross, man? "Ow." Might be why he hasn't shown up yet.
"Man, they're still wearing crosses. Fuck it, I'm not goin' back, Dad. No, they totally missed the point. When they start wearing fishes, I might show up again, but... let me bury fossils with you, Dad. Fuck 'em, let's fuck with 'em! Hand me that brontosaurus head, Dad.
β
β
Bill Hicks (Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines)
β
There was once an invisible man, the monster continued, though Conor kept his eyes firmly on Harry, who had grown tired of being unseen.
Conor set himself into a walk.
A walk after Harry.
It was not that he was actually invisible, the monster said, following Conor, the room volume dropping as they passed. It was that the people had become used to not seeing him.
"Hey!" Conor called. Harry didn't turn around. Neither did Sully nor Anton, though thet were still sniggering as Conor picked up his pace.
And if no one sees you, the monster said, picking up its pace, too, are you really there at all?
"HEY!" Conor called loudly.
The dining hall had fallen silent now, as Conor and the monster moved faster after Harry.
Harry who had still not turned around.
Conor reached him and grabbed him by the shoulder, twisting him round. Harry pretended to question what had happened, looking hard at Sully, acting like he was the one who'd done it. "Quit messing about," Harry said and turned away again.
Turned away from Conor.
And then one day the invisible man decided, the monster said, its voice ringing in Conor's ears, I will make them see me.
"How?" Conor asked, breathing heavily again, not turning back to see the monster standing there, not looking at the reaction of the room to the huge monster now in the midst, though he was aware of nervous murmurs and a strange anticipation in the air. "How did the man do it?"
Conor could feel the monster close behind him, knew that it was kneeling, knew that it was putting its face up to his ear to whisper into in, to tell him the rest of the story.
He called, it said for a monster.
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Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
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Or perhaps we should just ask Todd."
I pound the glass right at his face. He doesn't even flinch.
And then she says, "Todd would never tell you. Never."
And the Mayor just looks at me.
And he smiles
My stomach sinks, my heart drops, my head feels so light I feel like I'm going to drop right to the ground.
Oh, Viola-
Viola, please-
Forgive me.
"Captain Hammar," the Mayor says and Viola's plunged into the water again, unable to not scream out in fright as down she goes.
"NO!" I shout, pressing myself against the mirror.
But the Mayor ain't even looking at her.
He's looking right at me, as if he could see me even if I was behind a brick wall.
"STOP IT!" I shout as she's thrashing again-
And more-
And more-
"VIOLA!"
And I'm pounding even tho my hands are breaking-
And Mr. Hammar is grinning and holding her there-
"VIOLA!"
And her wrist are starting to bleed from where she's pulling-
"I'LL KILL YOU!"-
I'm shouting into the Mayor's face-
With all my Noise-
"I'LL KILL YOU!"-
And still holding her there-
"VIOLA! VIOLA!"-
But it's Davy-
Of all people-
It's Davy who stops it.
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Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
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I WANT her though, to take the same from me.
She touches me as if I were herself, her own.
She has not realized yet, that fearful thing, that
I am the other,
she thinks we are all of one piece.
It is painfully untrue.
I want her to touch me at last, ah, on the root and
quick of my darkness
and perish on me, as I have perished on her.
Then, we shall be two and distinct, we shall have
each our separate being.
And that will be pure existence, real liberty.
Till then, we are confused, a mixture, unresolved,
unextricated one from the other.
It is in pure, unutterable resolvedness, distinction
of being, that one is free,
not in mixing, merging, not in similarity.
When she has put her hand on my secret, darkest
sources, the darkest outgoings,
when it has struck home to her, like a death, "this is _him!_"
she has no part in it, no part whatever,
it is the terrible _other_,
when she knows the fearful _other flesh_, ah, dark-
ness unfathomable and fearful, contiguous and concrete,
when she is slain against me, and lies in a heap
like one outside the house,
when she passes away as I have passed away
being pressed up against the _other_,
then I shall be glad, I shall not be confused with her,
I shall be cleared, distinct, single as if burnished in silver,
having no adherence, no adhesion anywhere,
one clear, burnished, isolated being, unique,
and she also, pure, isolated, complete,
two of us, unutterably distinguished, and in unutterable conjunction.
Then we shall be free, freer than angels, ah, perfect.
VIII
AFTER that, there will only remain that all men
detach themselves and become unique,
that we are all detached, moving in freedom more
than the angels,
conditioned only by our own pure single being,
having no laws but the laws of our own being.
Every human being will then be like a flower, untrammelled.
Every movement will be direct.
Only to be will be such delight, we cover our faces
when we think of it
lest our faces betray us to some untimely fiend.
Every man himself, and therefore, a surpassing
singleness of mankind.
The blazing tiger will spring upon the deer, un-dimmed,
the hen will nestle over her chickens,
we shall love, we shall hate,
but it will be like music, sheer utterance,
issuing straight out of the unknown,
the lightning and the rainbow appearing in us
unbidden, unchecked,
like ambassadors.
We shall not look before and after.
We shall _be_, _now_.
We shall know in full.
We, the mystic NOW.
(From the poem the Manifesto)
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D.H. Lawrence
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These are the three stages of enlightenment, the three glimpses of satori.
1. The first stage enlightenment:
A Glimpse of the Whole
The first stage of enlightenment is short glimpse from faraway of the whole. It is a short glimpse of being.
The first stage of enlightenment is when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning. The ordinary ego is still present at the first stage of enlightenment, but you experience for a short while that there is something beyond the ego.
There is a gap, a silence and emptiness, where there is not thought between you and existence.
You and existence meet and merge for a moment.
And for the first time the seed, the thirst and longing, for enlightenment, the meeting between you and existence, will grow in your heart.
2. The second stage of enlightenment:
Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner Being
The second stage of enlightenment is a new order, a harmony, from within, which comes from the inner being. It is the quality of freedom.
The inner chaos has disappeared and a new silence, relaxation and togetherness has arisen.
Your own wisdom from within has arisen.
A subtle ego is still present in the second stage of enlightenment.
The Hindus has three names for the ego:
1. Ahamkar, which is the ordinary ego.
2. Asmita, which is the quality of Am-ness, of no ego. It is a very silent ego, not aggreessive, but it is still a subtle ego.
3. Atma, the third word is Atma, when the Am-ness is also lost. This is what Buddha callas no-self, pure being.
In the second stage of enlightenment you become capable of being in the inner being, in the gap, in the meditative quality within, in the silence and emptiness.
For hours, for days, you can remain in the gap, in utter aloneness, in God.
Still you need effort to remain in the gap, and if you drop the effort, the gap will disappear.
Love, meditation and prayer becomes the way to increase the effort in the search for God.
Then the second stage becomes a more conscious effort. Now you know the way, you now the direction.
3. The third stage of enlightenment:
Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure being
At the third stage of enlightenment, at the third step of Satori, our individual river flowing silently, suddenly reaches to the Ocean and becomes one with the Ocean.
At the third Satori, the ego is lost, and there is Atma, pure being. You are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the Ocean, the Whole.
It has become a vast emptiness, just like the pure sky.
The third stage of enlightenment happens when you have become capable of finding the inner being, the meditative quality within, the gap, the inner silence and emptiness, so that it becomes a natural quality.
You can find the gap whenever you want.
This is what tantra callas Mahamudra, the great orgasm, what Buddha calls Nirvana, what Lao Tzu calls Tao and what Jesus calls the kingdom of God.
You have found the door to God.
You have come home.
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Swami Dhyan Giten