Quotes from NOS4A2

“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, quote from NOS4A2

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

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

“I felt like it needed some color down there, so I painted the walls with the motherfucker.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“The blood of a redheaded woman is three degrees cooler than the blood of a normal woman. This has been established by medical studies.”
― Joe Hill, quote from 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.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“Gold don't come off. What's good stays good no matter how much of a beating it takes.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“What a blessed if painful thing, this business of being alive.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“No one looks too closely at a librarian. People are afraid of going blind from the glare of ssss-ssso much compressed wisdom.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“Innocence ain't all it's cracked up to be, you know. Innocent little kids rip the wings off flies, because they don't know any better. That's innocence.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“Everyone lives in two worlds,” Maggie said, speaking in an absentminded sort of way while she studied her letters. “There’s the real world, with all its annoying facts and rules. In the real world, there are things that are true and things that aren’t. Mostly the real world s-s-s-suh-sucks. 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. Emotions are as real as gravity. Dreams are as powerful as history. Creative people, like writers, and Henry Rollins, spend a lot of their time hanging out in their thoughtworld. S-s-strong creatives, though, can use a knife to cut the stitches between the two worlds, can bring them together. Your bike. My tiles. Those are our knives.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“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.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“... 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 Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“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.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“I don't know, maybe you'd be more interested in me if I were a book.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“You loved me as hard as you knew how. I'd give anything to go back and love you better...”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“And he paddled away in his douche canoe.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“To be honest, I think cell phones were invented by the devil.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“You can't let facts get in the way of the truth.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“Sooner or later a black car came for everyone.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“If 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. Whap the girls on the butts and send them off to their tricks as fast and often as I can.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“Aren'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 Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“Men, 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 Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“You had to know when it made sense to try to untangle something and when to just cut the motherfucker loose.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“Well. 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 Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“She just knew that even when you had nothing, you still had love.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“Vic’s father was badass. Other dads built things. Hers blew shit up and rode away on a Harley, smoking the cigarette he used to light the fuse. Top that.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“Everyone you lost was still there with you, and so maybe no one was ever lost at all.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“If you’re going to be mad, she heard her father say, then use it, and don’t be used by it.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

“She thought of mothering, which was really another word for being present and caring what happened to someone.”
― Joe Hill, quote from NOS4A2

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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