Quotes from Joe Hill

He knew, too, from things Vic had not told him, that she missed him and loved him with an intensity perhaps matched only by what she felt for her son.

People have pretty rubbery brains. They can take quite a bit of bouncing around. Come on. Band-Aids and tea. And answers. They're all right this way.

Get a spoonful of this, motherfuckers. Harper

The night had a nearly liquid quality, was like sliding into a warm swimming pool, a pool filled with buoyant darkenss instead of water.

She ran into the early-October afternoon. The light came at a low slant through the oaks across the street, gold and green, and how she loved that light. There was no light in the world like you saw in New England in early fall.

When she wasn't painting, when she didn't have creative work to occupy her, she became aware of a growing physical apprehension, like she was standing beneath a crane that was holding a piano aloft; at any moment she felt that the cables could snap and all that weight could fall upon her with a fatal crash.

they had had some good times together, and Buddy had made a decent meal in the end. Really, what else could you ask from a parent? He

That's not real good goddamn timing." "Artery stenosis is famously inconvenient," Bilbo said. "It never calls in advance. Just drops in to party whenever it feels like it.

No one looks too closely at a librarian. People are afraid of going blind from the glare of ssss-ssso much compressed wisdom. Check it out: I'm twenty years old, and I'm one of the top five SS-Scrabble players in the whole state. I guess that might say more about Iowa than it says about me.

You just missed a perfectly good opportunity to toast an awful Coldplay T-shirt. If I ever spontaneously combust, I hope I'm holding a whole stack of their CDs.

Ig knew her, of course. It was the same woman who had served him and Merrin drinks on their last night together. Her face was framed by two wings of lank black hair that curled under her long, pointed chin, so she looked like the female version of the wizard who was always giving Harry Potter such a hard time in the movies. Professor Snail or something. Ig had been waiting to read the books with the children he and Merrin planned to have together.

It's easy to dismiss religion as bloody, cruel, and tribal. I've done it myself. But it isn't religion that's wired that way—it's man himself. At bottom every faith is a form of instruction in common decency. Different textbooks in the same class. Don't they all teach that to do for others feels better than to do for yourself? That someone else's happiness need not mean less happiness for you?

Jude collected them in almost exactly the same way the Pied Piper had collected rats, and children. He made melodies out of hate and perversion and pain, and they came to him, skipping to the music, hoping he would let them sing along.

The pills I take are a paperweight. All they do is pin the fantasies down. But they're still there, and any strong wind that comes along, I can feel them rattling around, trying to slip free.

If ghosts have a color, then they are the color of an August thunderstorm getting ready to break.

GOD BURNED ALIVE ONLY DEVILS NOW.

Spit spot was a favorite of Mary Poppins, and Harper had, since childhood, liked to substitute Julie Andrews–isms for profanity whenever possible. It gave her a steely feeling of control and reminded her of her best self at the same time.

Vic twisted her head to peer back over her shoulder, wanting another look, and saw three other children emerging out of the alley behind her. One appeared to be holding a scythe; two of them were barefoot. Barefoot in the snow.

The past is always close, so close you can sing along with it, anytime you like.

Silence is the purest form of harmony. Everyone ought to try it. Put a stone in your mouth instead of a lie. Put a rock on your tongue instead of gossip. Bury the liars and the wicked under stones until they say no more. More weight, hallelujah.

It's easy to dismiss religion as bloody, cruel, and tribal. I've done it myself. But it isn't religion that's wired that way—it's man himself. At bottom every faith is a form of instruction in common decency. Different textbooks in the same class.

Most human lives were and are too short. Most people have lived out their days hungry and barefoot, on the run from this war and that famine, a plague here and a flood there. But people have to sing anyway. Even a baby that hasn't been fed in days will stop crying and look around when they hear someone singing in joy. You sing and it's like giving a thirsty person water. It's a kindness. It makes you shine.

but God fears woman even more than He fears the devil -and is right to. She, with her power to bring life into the world, was truly made in the image of the Creator, not man...

She felt woozy, as if she'd been running around on a full stomach in the August heat. A big man in a white undershirt stood behind the cash register. His shoulders were hairy and crimson with sunburn, and there was a line of zinc painted on his nose. A white plastic tag on his shirt said PETE.