Joe Hill > Quotes

“The best way to get even with anyone is to put them in the rearview mirror on your way to something better.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Was there any human urge more pitiful-or more intense- than wanting another chance at something?”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Maybe all the schemes of the devil were nothing compared to what man could think up.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“I guess Satan was the first superhero [...] 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.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“Fantasy was always only a reality waiting to be switched on.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Taking a thing apart is always faster than putting something together. This is true of everything except marriage.”
― Joe Hill, 20th Century Ghosts

“It bewildered Ig, the idea that a person could not be interested in music. It was like not being interested in happiness.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“Horror was rooted in sympathy . . . in understanding what it would be like to suffer the worst.”
― Joe Hill, Heart-Shaped Box

“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 grandchildren. Death is a raw deal for narrative junkies.”
― Joe Hill, The Fireman

“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, Horns

“God saves - but not now, and not here. His salvation is on layaway. Like all grifters, He asks you to pay now and take it on faith that you will receive later. Whereas women offer a different sort of salvation, more immediate and fulfilling. They don't put off their love for a distant, ill-defined eternity but make a gift of it in the here and now, frequently to those who deserve it least. So it was in my case. So it is for many. The devil and woman have been allies against God from the beginning...”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“He paused, twisting his goatee, considering the law in Deuteronomy that forbade clothes with mixed fibers. A problematic bit of Scripture. A matter that required thought. "Only the devil wants man to have a wide range of lightweight and comfortable styles to choose from," he murmured at last, trying out a new proverb. "Although there may be no forgiveness for polyester. On this one matter, Satan and the Lord are in agreement.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“I felt like it needed some color down there, so I painted the walls with the motherfucker.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“All the world is made of music. We are all strings on a lyre. We resonate. We sing together.”
― Joe Hill, Heart-Shaped Box

“When you think about it, most of the good ideas came along to make sin a whole lot easier.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“I mean, when the world comes for your children, with the knives out, it's your job to stand in the way.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“I see God now as an unimaginative writer of popular fictions, someone who builds stories around sadistic and graceless plots, narratives that exist only to express His terror of a woman's power to choose who and how to love, to redefine love as she sees fit, not as God thinks it ought to be. The author is unworthy of His own characters.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“Don't ever have children, Tyler, unless you're ready to be afraid everyday for the rest of your life.”
― Joe Hill, Locke & Key, Vol. 3: Crown of Shadows

“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, NOS4A2

“Terror is the desire to save your own ass, but horror is rooted in sympathy.”
― Joe Hill

“She'd thought love had something to do with happiness, but it turned out they were not even vaguely related. Love was closer to a need, no different from the need to eat, to breathe.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“I am; I was. I want to be.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“Gold don't come off. What's good stays good no matter how much of a beating it takes.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“What a blessed if painful thing, this business of being alive.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Everyone lives in two worlds,” Maggie said, speaking in an absentminded sort of way while she studied her letters. “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.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“The difference between childhood and adulthood, Vic had come to believe, was the difference between imagination and resignation. You traded one for the other and lost your way.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“No one looks too closely at a librarian. People are afraid of going blind from the glare of ssss-ssso much compressed wisdom.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Innocence ain't all it's cracked up to be, you know. Innocent little kids rip the wings off flies, because they don't know any better. That's innocence.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2