NOS4A2 Quotes

“As a world of shared ideas, Twitter is a kind of Inscape in and of itself, and a good one.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“What’s good stays good no matter how much of a beating it takes.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Some part of her felt that the existence of the bridge depended utterly on forward motion and not thinking too much.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“I’m not supposed to suh-ss-sleep in the library, but Ms. Howard lets me get away with it if it’s only now and then. She pities me, because I’m an orphan and kind of weird. That’s okay. I don’t mind. People make out like it’s a terrible thing to be pitied, but I say, Hey! I get to sleep in a library and read books all night! Without pity, where would I be? I’m a total pity s-s-ssslut.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“After six hours in the car, he felt no panic, only a kind of numb wonder. On some level he had come to view his situation as almost natural. Sooner or later a black car came for everyone. It came and took you away from your loved ones, and you never got to go back.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“She’d thought love had something to do with happiness, but it turned out they were not even vaguely related. Love was closer to a need, no different from the need to eat, to breathe. When Wayne fell asleep, his hot cheek against her naked breast, his lips smelling sweetly of the milk from her own body, she felt as if she was the one who had been fed.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“It was incomprehensible that her entire life had been a carousel of unhappiness, drinking, failed promises, and loneliness, all turning around and around a single afternoon encounter with this man.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“But everyone also lives in the world inside their own head. An inscape, a world of thought. In a world made of thought—in an inscape—every idea is a fact.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Whatever the children had become, whatever he had done to them, he had done to make them safe, to keep them from being run down by the world. He believed in his own decency with all his heart.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“The girl’s pretty little-girl face had deformed, lips stretching wide, becoming like the mouth of a flukeworm, a ragged pink hole encircled with teeth going all the way down her gullet. Her tongue was black, and her breath stank of old meat.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Vic smelled the vast vault filled with books before she saw it, because her eyes required time to adjust to the cavernous dark. She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“She ran into the early-October afternoon. The light came at a low slant through the oaks across the street, gold and green, and how she loved that light. There was no light in the world like you saw in New England in early fall.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“I know all about roads that can only be found with the mind. One of them is how I find my way to Christmasland. There is the Night Road, and the train tracks to Orphanhenge, and the doors to Mid-World, and the old trail to the Tree House of the Mind, and then there is Victoria’s wonderful covered bridge.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Ideas are as real as rocks.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“How she loved the smell of road: asphalt baking and soft in high July, dirt roads with their dust-and-pollen perfume in June, country lanes spicy with the odor of crushed leaves in sober October, the sand-and-salt smell of the highway, so like an estuary, in February.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“LIBRARIES: WHERE SHHH HAPPENS.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“She was down the street and around the corner when she realized she hadn’t put anything on besides the jacket and her boots. She was tramping around greater Denver at two in the morning in her faded pink panties. At least she had remembered the whiskey.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“When she wasn’t painting, when she didn’t have creative work to occupy her, she became aware of a growing physical apprehension, like she was standing beneath a crane that was holding a piano aloft; at any moment she felt that the cables could snap and all that weight could fall upon her with a fatal crash.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Ecstasy? Like the drug?” Michelle asked. “Wow. Trippy. They were into that back then?” “No. Not like the drug. Like fun. She’s a symbol of never-ending fun.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“It was impossible to have a conversation in a room with a phone. It was like having a conversation in a room with a bat hanging from the ceiling. Even if the bat was asleep, how were you supposed to think about anything else or look at anything else?”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“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?”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Everyone lives in two worlds, right? There’s the physical world . . . but there’s also our own private inner worlds, the world of our thoughts. A world made of ideas instead of stuff. It’s just as real as our world, but it’s inside.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“[Lou]: “I’m not talking about the angioplasty. I mean the stuff you’re pumping into me. What is it? Something serious?”
[Nurse]: “Oh. This is nothing. You’re not going under the knife today, so you don’t get the good shit. This is a blood-thinning agent. Also, it’ll mellow you out. Got to keep the mellows going.”
[Lou]: “It’ll put me to sleep?”
[Nurse]: “Faster than a marathon of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“It is all right to cry but don’t give up on laughter. Don’t give up on happiness. You need both. I had both.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Fantasy was always only a reality waiting to be switched on. They”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“The girl worked the clutch and the gas and the brake expertly with her right foot, just as her father had taught her.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Was there any human urge more pitiful—or more intense—than wanting another chance at something”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“books were girls, and reading was s-ss-ssss—fucking, this would be the biggest whorehouse in the county and I’d be the most ruthless pimp you ever met.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Puedo ser feliz y encontrarme bien unicamente logrando que otros sean felices y se encuentren bien.La carretera curativa a Christmasland es solo para los inocentes.El coche no me deja acapararla.Tengo que hacer el bien a otros si quiero que me hagan el bien a mi.¡Ojala el resto del mundo funcionara tambien asi!”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“It was no good being a mother. She wanted to start a website, a public-awareness campaign, a newsletter, to get the word out that if you were a woman and you had a child, you lost everything, you would be held hostage by love: a terrorist who would only be satisfied when you surrendered your entire future. The”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2