Longhaired preachers come out every night, Tryin' to tell us what's wrong and what's right. But when asked about something to eat, They will tell you in voices so sweet. You will eat (You will eat!) By and by, (By and by!) In that glorious land in the sky. (Way up high!) Work and pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die. (That's a lie!)
Joe HillMen, 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. Their clumsy affections, their bristly faces, and their willingness to do what needed to be done - cook an omelette, change lightbulbs, make with hugging - sometimes almost made being a woman fun.
Joe HillWe'll have freedom, love and health/When the grand red flag is flying, In the Workers' Commonwealth.
Joe HillThe soul may not be destroyed. The soul goes on forever. Like the number pi, it is without cessation or conclusion. Like pi it is a constant. Pi is an irrational number, incapable of being made into a fraction, impossible to divide from itself. So, too, the soul is an irrational, indivisible equation that perfectly expresses one thing: you.
Joe HillWell. 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 HillIt was like wondering how evil had come into the world or what happens to a person after he dies: an interesting philosophical exercise, but also curiously pointless, since evil and death happened, regardless of the why and the how and what-it-meant.
Joe HillThe soul is an irrational, indivisible equation that perfectly expresses one thing: you. The soul would be no good to the devil if it could be destroyed. And it is not lost when placed in Satan's care, as is so often said. He always know exactly how to put his finger on it.
Joe HillI 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 HillAren't you going to tell me I'm not so bad? she asked. Mmm-no. I was thinking how every man loves a hot girl with a history of making mistakes. Because it's always possible she'll make one with you.
Joe HillI didn't know the inner me was hungry," I said to Art. "That's because it already starved to death.
Joe HillThere's only room for one hero in this story-and everyone knows the devil doesn't get to be the good guy.
Joe Hill... people made the imaginary real all the time: taking the music they heard in their head and recording it, seeing a house in their imagination and building it. Fantasy was always only a reality waiting to be switched on.
Joe HillHer sanity was a fragile thing, a butterfly cupped in her hands, that she carried with her everywhere, afraid of what would happen if she let it go-or got careless and crushed it.
Joe HillThe 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 HillWere talking about an attitude. Delayed gratification is there, planning, be able to give up something now to get something later.
Joe HillIf 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 HillHorror was rooted in sympathy . . . in understanding what it would be like to suffer the worst.
Joe HillI 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