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.

— Joe Hill

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.

— Joe Hill

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

— Joe Hill

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

— 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.

— Joe Hill

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.

— Joe Hill

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.

— Joe Hill

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

— Joe Hill

It’d be a mistake,” Lee said. “I think maybe you have to make a few,” Merlin said. “If you don’t, you’re probably thinking too much. That’s the worst mistake you can make.

— Joe Hill

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

— Joe Hill