Jim Duehr

“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, The Fireman

“This reminds me: Are you going to eat the placenta?” Renée asked Harper. “I understand that’s a thing now. We stocked a pregnancy guide at the bookstore with a whole chapter of placenta recipes in the back. Omelets and pasta sauces and so on.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Harper said. “Dining on the placenta smacks of cannibalism, and I was hoping for a more dignified apocalypse.”
“Rabbit mothers eat their own babies,” the Mazz said. “I found that out reading Watership Down. Apparently the mamas chow on their newborns all the time. Pop them down just like little meat Skittles.”
― Joe Hill, The Fireman

“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.”
― Joe Hill, The Fireman

“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.”
― Joe Hill, The Fireman