Quotes from Joe Hill

Sometimes Wayne felt that the world had been sliding apart beneath his feet for years. He was still waiting for it to pull him down, to bury him at last.

The cicadas buzzed in Bing's head, like madness.

You're useful to me. Every day. Every hour. Anyone who knows how to love is useful to someone.

There had to be something in there, some useful tips for his situation, a homeopathic remedy you could apply when you came down with a bad case of the devil.

Even after you lost someone, it turned out you still had a relationship with that person, one you needed to tend to as you would tend to a relationship with any living friend or relative.

I know all about roads that can only be found with the mind. One of them is how I find my way to Christmasland. There is the Night Road, and the train tracks to Orphanhenge, and the doors to Mid-World, and the old trail to the Tree House of the Mind, and then there is Victoria's wonderful covered bridge.

She didn't like to feel things so intensely. It reminded her of being crazy.

I am a leaf on the wind," Lou said, and the man-nurse said, "Dude, don't say that. I don't want to start crying on the job.

was tall in a way she associated with fun-house mirrors: rail-thin legs and arms that went on forever.

Vic just laughed at that, didn't bother to tell him she had pulled his cell phone apart and shoved it in the garbage the day before. He took her in his arms, held her in his bearish embrace. He was a big man, glum about being overweight, but he smelled better than any guy she had ever met. His chest smelled of cedar and motor oil and the outdoors. He smelled like responsibility. For a moment, being held by him, she remembered what it had been like to be happy.

It was incomprehensible that her entire life had been a carousel of unhappiness, drinking, failed promises, and loneliness, all turning around and around a single afternoon encounter with this man.

It could me so much worse,' Renée said. 'It could be a disease that involves pus or leaky privates. It could've been one of these things where your parts rot and fall off. There's nothing sexy about swine flu. I bet this is the most sexy pathogen ever. I think it makes me look like a tigress! A fat, frumpy tigress. Like if Catwoman got really out of shape.

There's something horribly unfair about dying in the middle of a good story, before you have a chance to see how it all comes out. Of course, I suppose everyone always dies in the middle of a good story, in a sense. Your own story. Or the story of your children. Or your grandchildren. Death is a raw deal for narrative junkies.

She was working on the eighth step of her program and was here in Haverhill to make amends. For years she had not wanted Linda to know Wayne, to be a part of his life. She took pleasure in limiting her mother's contact with the boy, felt it was her job to protect Wayne from Linda. She wished now there had been someone to protect Wayne from herself. She had amends to make to him, too.

He didn't finish most of the stories he started anymore, couldn't bear to. He felt weak at the thought of reading another story about vampires having sex with other vampires. He tried to struggle through Lovecraft pastiches, but at the first painfully serious reference to the Elder Gods, he felt some important part of him going numb inside, the way a foot or a hand will go to sleep when the circulation is cut off. He feared the part of him being numbed was his soul.

One of the extraordinary adaptive powers of our species is its ability to transmute a stray encounter into a first chapter.

there was something awful about Christmas music when it was nearly summer. It was like a clown in the rain, with his makeup running.

it was Hooper. The big, pale dog stared urgently into Wayne's face, forepaws on the bed. His damp gaze was unhappy, even stricken.

That uncomfortable buzzing in your head is the hum of thought. I know the sensation must be quite unfamiliar.

It is all right to cry but don't give up on laughter. Don't give up on happiness. You need both. I had both.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself. —G. Greene Harper

The beard was actually less Dumbledore, more Hemingway, but the eyes behind the lenses of his glasses were a brilliant shade of blue that naturally suggested a man who could cast runes and speak to trees. Harper

It was even softer and fluffier than I'd imagined. It was like wearing an Ewok.

In the winter, when you're cold, the world extends no more than a foot in any direction.