Top 450 Joe Hill Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “Neither disclosed these private discomforts. Each wanted the other to have the illusion that they might pause, anywhere, at any moment, and make love. And while both thought this was highly unlikely – not in this heat, not at this hour – the possibility kept bubbling up, every place they touched. This was the only true protection they’d brought with them as they walked deeper into the blue-gold Mojave.”

— Joe Hill

402. “The thing I’m hung up on is the idea of seeing something real. I don’t think most people feel half the things they pretend to feel.”

— Joe Hill

403. “She had all his savage powers of logic. It made a person feel naive and childish for imagining there could be any good in the world at all.”

— Joe Hill

404. “The universe had settled into the business of taking things away from him:.”

— Joe Hill

405. “And at last Lee said, “What are those goddamn things on your head?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “Jesus, Ig. Are those horns?”

— Joe Hill

406. “The road will make me better. The road always does.”

— Joe Hill

407. “A book of stories isn’t a novel and can’t have the simple narrative drive of a novel. I think it should still try to have a feeling of progression, of connectedness. It’s like a road trip. You’re staying in a different inn every night:.”

— Joe Hill

408. “In stories told later, many boys would claim that the girls on Coffin Rock were decorated with chunks of raw turkey, soaked in poultry blood like the chick in fuckin’ Carrie, but this was embellishment.”

— Joe Hill

409. “Without understanding exactly how the trap got sprung, he can feel its teeth in him.”

— Joe Hill

410. “Minutes did not pass, collecting into hours. There was no point in thinking about time in the old way. There was only one moment and then another moment, in a string of moments that went on in a quiet, deadly procession.”

— Joe Hill

411. “To weep was a kind of luxury; the dead felt no loss, wept for no one and nothing.”

— Joe Hill

412. “You found yourself a librarian! I can help with the figuring-out thing and point you toward some good poetry while I’m at it. It’s what I do.”

— Joe Hill

413. “What he’d thought of as a personal strength – he was happy to know about her only what she wanted him to know – was something more like selfishness. A childish willingness to remain in the dark, to avoid distressing conversations, upsetting truths. He had feared her secrets – or, more specifically, the emotional entanglements that might come with knowing them.”

— Joe Hill

414. “You knew what was real not by its qualities but by its imperfections.”

— Joe Hill

415. “Writers were as parasitic, she supposed, as the spore itself.”

— Joe Hill

416. “The best time to see her is when the place is almost full.”

— Joe Hill

417. “Hutter thought, not for the first time, that she hated a lot of cops. Ugly, mean drunks who believed the worst of everyone.”

— Joe Hill

418. “It was a curious quirk of Harper’s nature that she grew calmer in the moments when others were most inclined to sink into hysterics; that she was habitually at her most observant and clear-eyed in the very times when others could not bear to see what was happening at all. She would’ve made a fine battlefield nurse. She.”

— Joe Hill

419. “I can Leap back, the plant thinks. Angie can no longer see what she is doing. Her eyes are shut, her thoughts have stopped. One small hand rests on Andy’s neck; the other fist withdraws until the knife points earthward. Down, down, down, the invader demands. Something sighs sharply, and it might be Andy or it might be the entire forest. Leap, Leap, Leap, the Joshua implores.”

— Joe Hill

420. “It’s better to just be a mammal. You know, take long naked naps in the sun. Never miss a chance to splash in the tide.”

— Joe Hill

421. “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

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

— Joe Hill

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

— Joe Hill

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

— Joe Hill

425. “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

426. “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

427. “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

428. “The universe had settled into the business of taking things away from him: the baby, his simple married happiness, the sensual enjoyment he took from the smell of pines.”

— Joe Hill

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

— Joe Hill

430. “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

431. “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

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

— Joe Hill

433. “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

434. “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

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

— Joe Hill

436. “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

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

— Joe Hill

438. “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

439. “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

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

— Joe Hill

441. “An old flame,” Harper said.”

— Joe Hill

442. “It was the end of the world, but you could still hit the drive-thru on your way to oblivion.”

— Joe Hill

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

— Joe Hill

444. “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

445. “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

446. “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

447. “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

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

— Joe Hill

449. “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

450. “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