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. - Patrick Ness

And what other kind of man would you want leading you into battle?” he says, reading my Noise. “What other kind of man is suitable for war?”
A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes monsters of men.
“Wrong,” says the Mayor. “It’s war that makes us men in the first place. Until there’s war, we are only children.”
Another blast of the horn comes roaring down at us, so loud it nearly takes our heads off and it puts the army off its stride for a second or two.
We look up the road to the bottom of the hill. We see Spackle torches gathering there to meet us.
“Ready to grow up, Todd?” the Mayor asks.

A man is capable of thought. A crowd is not.”

“An army is,” I say.

“Only if it has a general for a brain.

He was the thing the world had suffered from most in her four billion years of existence: a stupid man with power.