Joe Hill

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.

If 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.

I think if you cheat in a ethics class then there's really no hope for you.

Max raised the mallet. He stared into her face and wished he could say he was sorry, that he didn't want to do it. When he slammed the mallet down, with an echoing bang, he heard a high, piercing scream and almost screamed himself, believing for an instant it was her, still somehow alive; then realized it was Rudy. Max was powerfully built, with his, deep water-buffalo chest and Dutch farmer's shoulders. With the first blow he had driven the stake over two-thirds of the way in. He only needed to bring the mallet down once more. The blood that squelched up around the wood was cold and had a sticky, viscous consistency.Max swayed, his head light. His father took his arm.'Goot,' Abraham whispered into his ear, his arms around him, squeezing him so tightly his ribs creaked. Max felt a little thrill of pleasure - an automatic reaction to the intense, unmistakable affection of his father's embrace - and was sickened by it. 'To do offense to the house of the human spirit, even after its tenant depart, is no easy thing, I know.'("Abraham's Boys")

You loved me as hard as you knew how. I'd give anything to go back and love you better...

Someone probably a lot smarter than me said hell is other people. I say you're in hell when you don't give to someone who needs, because you can't bear to have less.

I think you must make a few [mistakes]. Of you don't, you're probably thinking too much. That's the worst mistake you can make.

The night had a nearly liquid quality, was like sliding into a warm swimming pool, a pool filled with buoyant darkenss instead of water.

He'd possessed all the key elements of a school shooter: hormones, misery, ammunition. People wondered how something like Columbine could happen. Jude wondered why it didn't happen more often.

Already, though, she understood the difference between being a child and being an adult. The difference is when someone says he can keep the bad things away, a child believes him.

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.

Does your license plate mean something?" Bing asked. "En-o-ess-four-a-two?""Nosferatu," the man Charlie Manx said."Nosfer-what-who?"Manx said, "It is one of my little jokes. My first wife once accused me of being a Nosferatu. She did not use that exact word, but close enough.

Because, of course, it wouldn't do to just talk to her. She had spoken to him in flashes of daylight, and he felt he ought to reply in kind.

I'm sorry to bother you," she whispered. "When I get excited about a movie I want to talk. I can't help it.

Kids always think they're coming into a story at the beginning, when usually they're coming in at the end.

Pick a sin we can both live with, is what I ask.

...but God fears woman even more than He fears the devil -and is right to. She, with her power to bring life into the world, was truly made in the image of the Creator, not man...

Death and ruin is man's preferred ecosystem.