Quotes from Joe Hill

That was one thing you found out when you were stoned, or wasted, or feverish: that the world was always turning and that only a healthy mind could block out the sickening whirl of it.

God loves man, we are told, but love must be proved by facts, not reasons. If you were in a boat and did not save a drowning man, you would burn in Hell for certain; yet God, in His wisdom, feels no need to use His power to save anyone from a single moment of suffering, and in spite of his inaction He is celebrated and revered.

If you're going to be mad, she heard her father say, then use it, and don't be used by it.

Terry was cool, cooler then Ig would ever be, but he was afraid. His fear narrowed his vision so that he couldn't see anything except what he stood to lose.

Men, she thought, were one of the world's few sure comforts, like a fire on a cold October night, like cocoa, like broken-in-slippers. Their clumsy affections, their bristly faces, and their willingness to do what needed to be done - cook an omelette, change lightbulbs, make with hugging - sometimes almost made being a woman fun.

She just knew that even when you had nothing, you still had love.

Vic's father was badass. Other dads built things. Hers blew shit up and rode away on a Harley, smoking the cigarette he used to light the fuse. Top that.

Keys turn both ways. You can lock something away... But you can also throw a bolt and set something free.

Death is a raw deal for narrative junkies.

I think if you cheat in a ethics class then there's really no hope for you.

She thought of mothering, which was really another word for being present and caring what happened to someone.

Someone probably a lot smarter than me said hell is other people. I say you're in hell when you don't give to someone who needs, because you can't bear to have less. What you are giving away then is your own soul.

You know, we might've fucked up the planet, sucking out all the oil, melting the ice caps, allowing ska music to flourish, but we made Coca-Cola, so goddamn it, people weren't all bad.

Sometimes I think every man wants to be a writer. They want to invent a world with the perfect imaginary woman, someone they can boss around and undress at will. They can work out their own aggressions with a few fictional rape scenes. Then they can send their fictional surrogate in to save her, a white knight – or a fireman! Someone with all the power and all the agency. Real women, on the other hand, have all these tiresome interests of their own, and won't follow an outline.

It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life

No. You can't understand. Because you're reading the last chapter of something without having read the first chapter. You're a little guy, Bode. Kids always think they're coming into a story at the beginning, when they're usually coming in at the end.

Christmas was almost four months in the rearview mirror, and 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's hard to make relationships work with others when you don't have a good relationship with yourself.

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.

There are no unselfish acts. When people do something for someone else, it's always for their own personal psychological reasons.

The Devil and woman have been allies against God from the beginning, ever since Satan first came to the first man in the form of a snake and whispered to Adam that true happiness was not to be found in prayer but in Eve's cunt.

With its towering smokestack, it looked like a factory built to produce nightmares in mass quantities.

He understood that the ghost existed first and foremost within his own head. That maybe ghosts always haunted minds, not places. If he wanted to take a shot at it, he'd have to turn the barrel against his own temple.

Maturity is not something that happens all at once. It is not a border between two countries where once you cross the invisible line, you are on the new soil of adulthood, speaking the foreign tongue of grown-ups. It is more like a distant broadcast, and you are driving toward it, and sometimes you can barely make it out through the hiss of static while other times the reception momentarily clears and you can pick up the signal with perfect clarity.