Joe Hill

In any random slaughter, the difference between living and dying rarely has anything to do with willpower, or wisdom, or pluck. It's just a matter of where you're standing. Two inches to the right, and the bus hits you. If your office is on the ninety-second floor instead of the ninetieth, you don't make it out in time.

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Vic didn't have a car and probably spent a hundred and sixty hours a week at home. The house smelled of piss-soaked diapers and engine parts, and the sink was always full.In retrospect Vic was only surprised she didn't go crazy sooner. She was surprised that more young mothers didn't lose it. When your tits had become canteens and the soundtrack to your life was hysterical tears and mad laughter, how could anyone expect you to remain sane?

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Don't ever have children, Tyler, unless you're ready to be afraid everyday for the rest of your life.

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I mean, when the world comes for your children, with the knives out, it's your job to stand in the way.

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But it turned out life was more like the kind of song the Stones wrote: you didn't get any satisfaction, you took one hit to the body after another, if you were a woman you were a bitch who belonged under someone's thumb, and if you wanted mother's little helper from your dear doctor you better have the silver, take it or leave it, and don't come crying for sympathy, that was just for the devil.

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The people in charge can always justify doing terrible things in the name of the greater good. A slaughter here, a little torture there. It becomes moral to do things that would be immoral if an ordinary individual did 'em.

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They had been Vince's brothers in a way, and Race was his son, and you couldn't drive a man's family to the earth and expect to live.

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Eighteen and stupid happens to everyone, I guess. If you survive it, it's probably half luck, and half having the right people in your life to watch out for you.

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In this world, family is the final, most elemental unit of power. A small group, helplessly bound together by blood with a shared set of skills and tools for consolidating power and subjugating others.

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He had no doubt that Merrin had called out to God here in this place while she was been raped and killed, in her heart if not with her voice. God's reply had been that due to the high volume of calls she could expect to be on hold until she was dead.

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Fantasy was always only a reality waiting to be switched on.

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I liked AC/DC, Lee said. If you were going to shoot someone, you'd really want to do it while you were listening to them.What about the Beatles? Did you feel like shooting anyone listening to them?Lee considered seriously for a moment, then said, Myself.At the same time he was laughing, Ig was distressed. Not liking the Beatles was almost as bad as not knowing about them at all.

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All the world is made of music. We are all strings on a lyre. We resonate. We sing together.

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It bewildered Ig, the idea that a person could not be interested in music. It was like not being interested in happiness.

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Humanity is worse than flies.

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Whatever your sexual orientation, whatever your ethnicity, whatever your age or personal experience, it is my hope you will find a hero somewhere here you can relate to, that speaks to the world as you see it. Even better: there is a good chance you will find some heroes who are deeply, fundamentally different from yourself. I don't have much patience with readers who yearn to explore incredible worlds and mind-bending situations but grow cold at the idea of imagining their way into different political ideas, different faiths, a different gender, a different skin, a different life.

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There's something horribly unfair about dying in the middle of a good story, before you have a chance to see how it all comes out. Of course, I suppose everyone ALWAYS dies in the middle of a good story, in a sense. Your own story. Or the story of your grandchildren. Death is a raw deal for narrative junkies.

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The 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.

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You sure you're all right? You aren't out here pondering dark female thoughts are you?

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I 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.

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Quotes by Joe Hill