Quotes from Joe Hill

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? "Only

I liked it better when you were dying," Allie said. "You didn't bitch so much." "Look sharp, Allie. I think you missed a pothole back there. You don't want to break up your streak of dragging me over every one." Allie

would be a great comfort to her, and that was in fact exactly why she resisted. She had sensed if she gave in once, just once, the next time would be easy. They

You're a sympathetic sonofabitch, you know that?". "You want sympathy, go fuck James Taylor.

Gold don't come off. What's good stays good, no matter how much of a beating it takes. You're okay. You'll always be okay.

I like 'Master Conspirator,'" said the Fireman. "That has a nice ring. A touch of poetry and darkness to it. If you could get killed for having the job, you should at least have the pleasures of an official title with some sex appeal.

She had all his savage powers of logic. It made a person feel naive and childish for imagining there could be any good in the world at all.

Hutter thought, not for the first time, that she hated a lot of cops. Ugly, mean drunks who believed the worst of everyone.

Ten pojeb chce, ?eby ka?dy dzie? by? Bo?ym Narodzeniem, ale ja mu, kurwa, urz?dz? Dzie? Niepodleg?o?ci.

She'd thought love had something to do with happiness, but it turned out they were not even vaguely related. Love

fucking Judas Coyne on the boom box, a guy whose idea of musical complexity is a song with four power chords instead of three.

Time to pour a glass of strawberry Quik—Mr. Beukes liked to use it as an ingredient in his protein shakes, and I liked to use it as an ingredient in my fat ass—

It tastes better than a rock." Allie tossed back the quarter inch Harper had given her in a single swallow, then made a face. "Oh, God. No it doesn't. This is piss. Like drinking gasoline after someone stirred it with a Butterfinger. Or like a banana smoothie that went rotten. Horrible." "You

The path to her old self is overgrown, lost in the briars. But her sleeping mind . . . you thingg, Michael, the sleeping mind has paths of its own? Trails the waking self has never walked?

Fuck it fuck it fuck it fuck it. They were perhaps the only true words of prayer she had ever been able to utter with all her heart.

The thing I'm hung up on is the idea of seeing something real. I don't think most people feel half the things they pretend to feel.

You want to be able to read such stories in just one or two sittings. You want them to feel like a hand on your throat.

If hell was anything, it was talk radio—and family. In

money he didn't have, but fuck it, that was the easiest kind to spend—and

Christian had settled in one of the camp chairs with his drawing pad but leaped up to study a cobweb in a high shadowed corner. The spider had spun a few words into the web: FREE BED FOR FLYS

I do not claim that God is dead. I tell you He is alive and well but in no position to offer salvation, being damned Himself for His criminal indifference. He was lost the moment He demanded fealty and worship before He would offer His protection. The unmistakable bargain of a gangster.

It would be a librarian.

The memory of that day in the dump made him a little sentimental for his father—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?

Wayne was certain dogs were as superstitious as humans. More, maybe.