Top 450 Joe Hill Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “He had despised that Mary with her idiot smile, symbol of a story that meant nothing, servant of a God who no good to anyone.”

— Joe Hill

402. “Still, she shoved herself to her feet, because she needed to do what she could, whether it made a difference or not.”

— Joe Hill

403. “If ghosts have a color, then they are the color of an August thunderstorm getting ready to break.”

— Joe Hill

404. “In a lot of ways, I guess Satan was the first superhero.”

— Joe Hill

405. “It is odd how much we want to be in love when you think about how much anxiety comes with it, like a tax on money you won in the lottery.”

— Joe Hill

406. “The teenagers who had signed up to be Lookouts loved hustling in the cold, pretending they were marines on a black op. Most of them had been preparing for postapocalyptic stealth missions since they were old enough to pick up an Xbox controller. “Father.”

— Joe Hill

407. “But other creatures of the desert do seem to apprehend what is happening. Through the crosshairs of its huge pupils, a tarantula watches Angie’s skin drink in the danger: the pollen from the Joshua mixes with the red blood on her finger. On a fuchsia ledge of limestone, a dozen lizards witness the Leap. They shut their gluey eyes as one, sealing their lucent bodies from contagion, inter-kingdom corruption.”

— Joe Hill

408. “Most people took no more notice of the profoundly deaf than they did of their own shadows. They.”

— Joe Hill

409. “Do you spend a lot of nights keeping the fire department in hysterics with creative acts of arson?” “Everyone needs a hobby,” he said. Then.”

— Joe Hill

410. “It was, I imagine, how bees feel. Not like an individual at all, but like one humming note in a whole world of perfect, useful music.”

— Joe Hill

411. “The enthusiasm, the swell of sweet courage he heard in her voice, filled him with Seattle-grunge levels of despair.”

— Joe Hill

412. “Written in faded blue letters, ornate, almost Gothic, across Gil’s chest, were two lines: It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself. – G. Greene.”

— Joe Hill

413. “I say you’re in hell when you don’t give to someone who needs, because you can’t bear to have less.”

— Joe Hill

414. “It tasted of the oak cask and sweet annihilation.”

— Joe Hill

415. “She wasn’t sure good intentions always paved the road to hell, but they for sure weren’t the highest standard of medical care. She.”

— Joe Hill

416. “Nor had he wanted to get right with God; he felt that God needed to get right with him.”

— Joe Hill

417. “I’ve already visited the lost and lonely place at the end of the world, and all I know is, the only way to keep going is to do the things the people you loved would’ve wanted you to do.”

— Joe Hill

418. “At times, my brother made me think of one of those tapered, horned conch shells, with a glossy pink interior curving away and out of sight into some tightly wound inner mystery. You could hold your ear to such a shell and imagine you heard the depths of a vast roaring ocean – but it was really just a trick of acoustics.”

— Joe Hill

419. “The problem with inviting the unnatural into your life is it might decide to stay.”

— Joe Hill

420. “An old flame,” Harper said.”

— Joe Hill

421. “I was so scared of doing the wrong thing I hardly ever did the right thing.” Vic.”

— Joe Hill

422. “They are both silent, doubt and grief and fury scuttling between them like beetles in search of a meal. Tetsuo and the girl stare at each other with such deep familiarity that Key feels forgotten, alone – almost ashamed of the dreams that have kept her alive for a decade. They have never felt so hopeless, or so false. “Her name is Key,” Tetsuo says, in something like defeat. He turns away, though he makes no move to leave. “She will be your new caretaker.”

— Joe Hill

423. “She was prone to whistling bits from 1960s movie musicals and had secret fantasies of being joined in song by helpful blue jays and cheeky robins. “I.”

— Joe Hill

424. “His own eyes prickle wetly. His blond hair darkens with sweat; pearls of water stand out on his smooth six-year-old forehead. The longer he stares back, the wider the gaze seems to get, like a grin. Her eyes radiate hard spines of heat, which drill into him. Timmy Babson feels punctured, “seen.” “Jane!” Timmy screams for his mother, calling for her by her first name for the first time. “Jane, Jane! It’s looking.”

— Joe Hill

425. “It was less like she was lying in their dark bedroom, surfing the web to read about other women’s miscarriages, and more as if the building had collapsed on them and they were trapped under tons of brick and plaster.”

— Joe Hill

426. “If he took you camping after he died, my boy, then you would have a story to tell!”

— Joe Hill

427. “Oh, yeah,” my dad said. “Check out Such Men Are Dangerous, the novel Block wrote as Paul Kavanagh. That book is less like a novel, more like getting mugged in an alley.” Such Men Are Dangerous was the story of an ex-soldier who had done ugly things in the war and come home looking to do some ugly things right here. While it has been decades since I read it, I think my dad’s assessment was roughly correct.”

— Joe Hill

428. “Miriam sang, “Gail, Gail, she bosses everyone around. Gail, Gail, she is really stupid.” The melody was just as good as the lyrics.”

— Joe Hill

429. “Ever try not to think? It’s like trying not to breathe – no one can do it for long.”

— Joe Hill

430. “The Gasmask Man.”

— Joe Hill

431. “She’d thought love had something to do with happiness, but it turned out they were not even vaguely related.”

— Joe Hill

432. “I hope you didn’t burn up, British Isles! Where would the world be without your epic contributions to culture: Duran Duran, Idris Elba, and Love Actually? Drop me an e-mail, England, let me know you’re still hanging in there!”

— Joe Hill

433. “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.”

— Joe Hill

434. “Remember the stone in her fist.”

— Joe Hill

435. “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.”

— Joe Hill

436. “Thoughts flashed by, like cards glimpsed as the dealer shuffles the deck.”

— Joe Hill

437. “Then something explodes behind her eyelids into a radial green fan, dazzling her with pain. Her neck aches, her abdomen. The pain moves lower. It feels as if an umbrella were opening below her navel. Menstrual cramps, she thinks. Seconds later, as with a soldering iron, an acute and narrowly focused heat climbs her spine.”

— Joe Hill

438. “In the distance, she could hear the congregation roaring the Talking Heads, bellowing about the sweet release of burning it all down.”

— Joe Hill

439. “Come! All ye faithful! Jiggy and triii-umphant! Come all ye faithful, sing yay for the Lord!”

— Joe Hill

440. “Although nothing keeps a person youthful like happiness. Innocent fun is as good as pickling a fellow!”

— Joe Hill

441. “She had learned from Jakob to think of people who spoke of blessings and faith as simple and a little infirm. People who thought things happened for a reason were to be pitied. Such folk had given up their curiosity about the universe for a comforting children’s story.”

— Joe Hill

442. “For all we know, we might’ve already slipped into the future without noticing it.”

— Joe Hill

443. “I patted the party gun dry, set it down next to the sink, and schlopped off my wet shirt.”

— Joe Hill

444. “Science Fiction stories are the dazzling flares we launch into the darkness, to catch a glimpse of the country before us and show us our way.”

— Joe Hill

445. “This is the way people dream of being kissed, a movie star kiss.”

— Joe Hill

446. “I’d rather ask questions,” she said, “than answer them.”

— Joe Hill

447. “It would be a librarian.”

— Joe Hill

448. “He watched until Danny passed through the gates, turned left, and disappeared from sight. Jude never saw him again.”

— Joe Hill

449. “She thought, too, with a certain calm satisfaction, that if the bridge did crash into the river, ten stories below, and she was smashed in the rubble, it would be her parents’ fault for fighting and driving her out of the house, and that would teach them.”

— Joe Hill

450. “It was ludicrous to cry because there was no more Google, but for a moment Harper felt very close to weeping. The idea that Google could collapse and be gone was as hard to imagine as the fall of the Twin Towers. It had seemed at least as permanent a part of the cultural landscape.”

— Joe Hill