Joe Hill Quotes

I wanted to explore this idea that the bogey man in the closet is scary, but being a mother is scarier. ~ Joe Hill

Are you sure I can't have a little sniff of Oxy?" the doctor asked. He brightened. "I'd share. We could get fucked up together. ~ Joe Hill

A flock isn't such a bad thing if you belong, but a few hundred starlings will tear an unlucky martin to feathers if it crosses their path. ~ Joe Hill

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 ~ Joe Hill

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

If you didn't have me to rake you over the coals now and then, there wouldn't be any fire in your life at all. ~ Joe Hill

Money he didn't have, but fuck it, that was the easiest kind to spend - and ~ Joe Hill

I remember an era when you could get your nose sliced off for sticking it too far into another man's business. Now you can find out anything about anyone with the click of a button. There is no privacy and no consideration, and everyone is prying into things that aren't their affair. You can probably check on the intertube and find out what color underwear I have on today. ~ Joe Hill

They're looking for you," she told him. "I heard it on the radio."

"They better be careful," he said, without looking back at her. "They might find me. ~ Joe Hill

He felt that when his little men were painted well, they possessed a tension, a suggestion that they might, at any moment, begin to move on their own and charge the French line. ~ Joe Hill

He had long accepted that everyone had his own world inside, each as real as the communal world shared by all but impossible for others to access. ~ Joe Hill

There were little triangles of coconut custard pie on a graham cracker crust for dessert, the best and sweetest thing ... ~ Joe Hill

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. ~ Joe Hill

I know all about bridges like that one. 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. ~ Joe Hill

Harper said, "But Snuffleupagus was real."
"That is the most wonderful sentence I have ever heard. I want that on my gravestone. Snuffleupagus was real. No more. Just that. ~ Joe Hill

It'd be a mistake," Lee said. "I think maybe you have to make a few," Merrin said. "If you don't, you're probably thinking too much. That's the worst mistake you can make. ~ Joe Hill

I want you to remember what was good in me, not what was most awful. The people you love should be allowed to keep their worst to themselves. ~ Joe Hill

You know someone for a while and then one day a hole opens underneath them, and they fall out of your world. ~ Joe Hill

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

A little north of Boston, there was something called LOVECRAFT KEYHOLE; it was a crater in the rough shape of a padlock. ~ Joe Hill

There's the real world, with all its annoying facts and rules. In the real world, there are things that are true and things that aren't. Mostly the real world s-s-s-suh-sucks. But everyone also lives in the world inside their own head. An inscape, a world of thought. In a world made of thought - in an inscape - every idea is a fact. Emotions are as real as gravity. Dreams are as powerful as history. Creative people, like writers, and Henry Rollins, spend a lot of their time hanging out in their thoughtworld. S-s-strong creatives, though, can use a knife to cut the stitches between the two worlds, can bring them together. Your bike. My tiles. Those are our knives. She ~ Joe Hill

They were in a trench sliding through a forest of corn. Machine stood over the rows, black girders that arced in the sky like the proscenium above a stage. The thought occurred to Wayne that those machines were sprayers, full of poison. They would drench the corn in a lethal rain to keep it from being eaten by invasive species. Those exact words - "invasive species" - rang through his brain. Later the corn would be lightly washed and people would eat it. ~ Joe Hill

Bing," Manx said, "I thought I told you to put Mr. and Mrs. de Zoet in the spare room!"
"Well," Bing said, "they aren't hurting anyone."
"No. Of course they're not hurting anyone. They're dead! But that's no reason to have them underfoot either! ~ Joe Hill

Well. That's helpful. We'll put an APB out on the Gingerbread Man. I'm not hopeful it'll do us much good, though. Word on the street is you can't catch him. ~ Joe Hill

Healthy American boobies, that's what we're fighting for," he said. "That needs to be in the Constitution. Every man has a right to life, liberty, and germ-free titties. Learn the drill, girls. If we show up at your front door, be ready to do your patriotic duty and show us your freedom-loving, virus-free knockers." The ~ Joe Hill

It was perhaps, the devil's oldest precept, that sin could always be trusted to reveal what was most human in a person as often for good as for ill. ~ Joe Hill

And at last Lee said, "What are those goddamn things on your head?" He sounded genuinely surprised. "Jesus, Ig. Are those horns? ~ Joe Hill

She wished she were not so aware of the vast gulf between what the men in her life thought she was worth and her actual value. She had, it seemed to her, always asked and expected too much and given too little. She seemed almost to have a perverse impulse to make anyone who cared about her regret it, to find the thing that would most appall those people and then do that until they had to run away as a matter of self-preservation. ~ Joe Hill

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. ~ Joe Hill

Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.
-Joe Hill, The Preacher and the Slave ~ Michael Lee West

People would believe almost any awful thing their private devil told them. ~ Joe Hill

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

Wouldn't be very fair to the rest of them, would it?" Harper asked. "They're not bad people, most of them. All they want is to be safe."
"Isn't that always a permission slip for ugliness and cruelty? All they want is to be safe, and they don't care who they have to destroy to stay that way. And the people who want to kill us, the Cremation Crews, all they want is safety, too! ~ Joe Hill

They glowed in the darkness, all of them: pale shining wisps with rings of light where their eyes belonged, as if they were the dead - ghosts risen from their graves - not Gilbert Cline. Harper felt their grief as a slow current of cold water, and herself as a leaf revolving upon it. As ~ Joe Hill

Americans curse without any imagination at all. Harper ~ Joe Hill

He got up and ran on, pitching himself down the hill, flying through the branches of the firs, leaping roots and rocks without seeing them. As he went, the hill got steeper and steeper, until it was really like falling. He was going too fast and he knew when he came to a stop, it would involve crashing into something, and shattering pain.

Only as he went on, picking up speed all the time, until with each leap he seemed to sail through yards of darkness, he felt a giddy surge of emotion, a sensation that might have been panic but felt strangely like exhilaration. He felt as if at any moment his feet might leave the ground and never come back down. He knew this forest, this darkness, this night. He knew his chances: not good. He knew what was after him. It had been after him all his life. He knew where he was - in a story about to unfold an ending. He knew better than anyone how these stories went, and if anyone could find their way out of these woods, it was him.

("Best New Horror") ~ Joe Hill

I wish you didn't first see me takin' my clothes off for drunks. I wish we didn't meet in a strip club. I wish you could've known me before I started with that kind of thing. Before I got like I am. Before I did all the things I wish I could take back.

You know how people pay more money to buy furniture that's been roughed up a little? What do they call it? Things that have been distressed? That's because something that's seen a little wear is just more interesting than something brand-new that hasn't ever had a scuff on it. ~ Joe Hill

Talking to her now was like flailing his hands at a storm of hornets. It did nothing, and it stung, and yet he couldn't stop himself. ~ Joe Hill

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. ~ Joe Hill

The night was aromatic with the smell of autumn and the steely fragrance of freshly dampened blacktop. How she loved the smell of road: asphalt baking and soft in July, dirt roads with their dust-and-pollen perfume in June, country lanes spicy with the odor of crushed leaves in sober October, the sand-and-salt smell of the highway, so like an estuary, in February. ~ Joe Hill

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. ~ Joe Hill

His father had smashed his very first guitar for him, in an early attempt to rid Jude of his musical ambitions. Jude hadn't been able to repeat the act himself, not even onstage, for show, when he could afford all the guitars he wanted. He was, however, perfectly willing to use one as a weapon to defend himself. In a sense he supposed he had always used them as weapons. ~ Joe Hill

Time must be slowed to a crawl to make sense of any scene of true chaos - to show the flurry of human action and reaction going off like multiple strings of firecrackers, all at once. Every ~ Joe Hill

First time I ever joint the Chorus," Don Lewiston said, "I forgot the face of my father, ~ Joe Hill

You and your beard and your big leather jacket and your big black car and your huge black boots. Nobody wears this much armor unless it has been hurt by someone who had no reason to hurt him. ~ Joe Hill

When you were a Goth, it was important to at least imply the possibility you might burst into flames in direct sunlight. ~ Joe Hill

Sometimes it seemed that one of the stars came loose from the firmament and sailed off with dizzying speed to a far corner of the night. In the dark hours before sunrise, constellations came apart and reformed and fell in burning streaks. ~ Joe Hill

he sees a place where he will passively fade away, like wallpaper that gets too much sunlight and slowly loses its color. This ~ Joe Hill

Don't ever have children, Tyler, unless you're ready to be afraid everyday for the rest of your life. ~ Joe Hill

The girl worked the clutch and the gas and the brake expertly with her right foot, just as her father had taught her. ~ Joe Hill

Charlie Manx laughed, the big, hoarse hee-haw of a country shithead who has just heard a joke involving a kike, a nigger, and a feminist. ~ Joe Hill

I remind myself that no one day of writing matters all that much. A story is built somewhat like a stalactite - one little drip of mud and grit at a time. ~ Joe Hill

Usually you can only catch the Sasquatch blur of your own legendary moments in the side mirrors. ~ Joe Hill

It was as if the room beyond the blast furnace was a tub and someone had turned the faucets on the cold and hot running snakes. ~ Joe Hill

As a world of shared ideas, Twitter is a kind of Inscape in and of itself, and a good one. ~ Joe Hill

She wanted to believe that information brought clarity. Not for the first time in her life, however, she had the disconcerting notion that it was often the opposite. Information was a jar of flies, and when you unscrewed the lid, they went everywhere and good luck to you trying to round them all up again. ~ Joe Hill

It'll always bother you, wondering what you missed out on," Merrin said now. "That's how men are. I'm just being practical. I'm not waiting to get married to you so I can fight through your midlife affair with our babysitter. I'm not going to be the reason for your regrets. ~ Joe Hill

When he was on the road, or recording, he had become accustomed to rolling into bed at five in the morning and sleeping through most of the daylight hours, but staying up all night had never come naturally. On the road, he would wake at four in the afternoon, bad-tempered and headachy, confused about where the time had gone. Everyone he knew would seem to him clever imposters, unfeeling aliens wearing rubber skin and the faces of friends. It took a liberal quantity of alcohol to make them seem like themselves again. ~ Joe Hill

Not that they were married. They never would've married. All firemen are wedded to cinders, in the end. ~ Joe Hill

We have all been found guilty of being human. There are worse crimes. ~ Joe Hill

The last man she'd dated said something to her, shortly before they broke up: 'I don't know, maybe I'm boring, but I never really feel like you're there when we're out to dinner. You live in your head. I can't. No room for me in there. I don't know, maybe you'd be more interested in me if I were a book.'

She had hated him at the time, and hated herself a little, but later, looking back, Hutter had decided that even if that particular boyfriend had been a book, he would've been one from the Business & Finance aisle and she would've passed him by and looked for something in SF & Fantasy. ~ Joe Hill

That's what I mean. I thought it was only in filthy places no one wants to go, like Chernobyl and Detroit. ~ Joe Hill

Nah. Hero, for sure. Think about it. In his first adventure, he took the form of a snake to free two prisoners being held naked in a Third World jungle prison by an all-powerful megalomaniac. At the same time, he broadened their diet and introduced them to their own sexuality. Sounds kind of like a cross between Animal Man and Dr. Phil to me. ~ Joe Hill

Sam Cleary reached the two old men fighting on the ground and used the fire extinguisher for the first time, bringing it down two-handed to hit Charlie Manx in the face. He would use it for the second time on Tom Priest, not thirty seconds later, by which time Tom was well dead.
Not to mention well done. ~ Joe Hill

The Naughty List - People who skim or outright skip acknowledgments pages. Please contact the management for your free, all-expenses-paid pass to Christmasland. ~ Joe Hill

Some part of her felt that the existence of the bridge depended utterly on forward motion and not thinking too much. ~ Joe Hill

The blood of a redheaded woman is three degrees cooler than the blood of a normal woman. This has been established by medical studies. ~ Joe Hill

A thin gold chain glittered at his throat. ~ Joe Hill

Eighteen and stupid happens to everyone, I guess. If you survive it, it's probably half luck, and half having the right people in your life to watch out for you. ~ Joe Hill

GOD BURNED ALIVE ONLY DEVILS NOW. ~ Joe Hill

She was saying he wasn't like the children in Christmasland. She was saying he was still himself. But Charlie Manx had said something different. Charlie Manx said blood didn't come out of silk. Tabitha ~ Joe Hill

They're not bad people, most of them. All they want is to be safe." "Isn't that always a permission slip for ugliness and cruelty? All they want is to be safe, and they don't care who they have to destroy to stay that way. And ~ Joe Hill

You don't want to start A Game of Thrones when you might catch fire all of a sudden. 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. ~ Joe Hill

-one teebs? You mean tablespoon?"
"I don't know. ~ Joe Hill

Why are there so many romantic songs about the spring? I hate the spring. The snow melts, and everything smells like thawing dog shit. ~ Joe Hill

PLEEZ BE QUITE IN THE LIBERY PEPLE R TRYING TO GET HI! ~ Joe Hill

It was as if the day's whole motion had merely described a great circle that was always, inevitably, going to lead him back to where he had started. ~ Joe Hill

But it turned out life was more like the kind of song the Stones wrote: you didn't get any satisfaction, you took one hit to the body after another, if you were a woman you were a bitch who belonged under someone's thumb, and if you wanted mother's little helper from your dear doctor you better have the silver, take it or leave it, and don't come crying for sympathy, that was just for the devil. ~ Joe Hill

This book is written from a changing town in Virginia, but this class of mine, these people
the ones who smell like an ashtray in the checkout line, devour a carton of Little Debbies at a sitting, and praise Jesus for a truck with no spare tire
exist in every state in our nation. Maybe the next time we on the left encounter such seemingly self-screwing, stubborn, God-obsessed folks, we can be open to their trials, understand the complexity of their situation, even have enough solidarity to pop for a cheap retread tire out of our own pockets, simply because that would be the kind thing to do and surely would make the ghosts of Joe Hill, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Mohandas Gandhi smile. ~ Joe Bageant

Was there any human urge more pitiful-or more intense- than wanting another chance at something? ~ Joe Hill

Ten thousand people wrote letters to the governor of Utah, protesting the verdict, but Joe Hill was executed by a firing squad. Before he died he wrote to Bill Haywood, another IWW leader, "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize." Socialism, ~ Howard Zinn

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. ~ Joe Hill

All those tattoos. A woman could get any tattoo she liked, but they all said the same thing. They were a sign reading AVAILABLE FOR RENT. ~ Joe Hill

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. ~ Joe Hill

It's hard to make relationships work with others when you don't have a good relationship with yourself. ~ Joe Hill

Maybe she had found everything the world had to offer her: a notion very like despair. ~ Joe Hill

There are two infections running rampant. One is the Dragonscale, and the other is panic. ~ Joe Hill

Just a lot of 'fuck fuck fuck' over and over again? Can't you expand your range a little? Goddamn bloody arsefoam. Daddy drilling Mommy on the kitchen table. That sort of thing. Americans curse without any imagination at all. ~ Joe Hill

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. ~ Joe Hill

I was too scared to kill you. I had a gun. I bought it just to shoot you. But the closest I ever came to killing anyone with it was myself. I put it in my mouth one night to see how it tasted. ... I was scared to do that, too. Not because I'm afraid I'll go to hell for committing suicide. It's because I'm afraid I won't go to hell ... that there isn't a hell to go to. No heaven either. Just nothing. Mostly I think there emus be nothing after we die. Sometimes that seems like it would be a relief. Other times it's the most awful thing I can imagine. ~ Joe Hill

Who knows what may lie around the next corner? There may be a window somewhere ahead. It may look out on a field of sunflowers. ~ Joe Hill

Do you like eighties music, Nurse Willowes?" "Can we discuss the oldies another time?" "What? What? The oldies? I've already had a man kicking in my ribs, and now you pull out my heart." "Hey! ~ Joe Hill

Boy, this is your lucky day!" She clapped her hands. "You found yourself a librarian! I can help wit the figuring-out thing and point you toward some good poetry while I'm at it. It's what I do. ~ Joe Hill

I felt like it needed some color down there, so I painted the walls with the motherfucker. ~ Joe Hill

The road will make me better. The road always does. ~ Joe Hill

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

The sky was the color of a migraine. ~ Joe Hill

A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. And I maintain that if a person can put a few common sense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humor, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read. ~ Joe Hill

The Brat - Victoria to her second-grade teacher, Vicki to her mother, but the Brat to her father and in her heart - was ~ Joe Hill

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. ~ Joe Hill