“When you know you’re worth loving, you can be a little imperfect. Hell, look at me—a lot imperfect. It makes all the difference in the world when you believe someone loves you enough that they don’t overlook the spot and the messed up hair. They just add it to the things about you that make them love you all the more.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“You're what my art's all about, Marcus. We see something and think we know it, understand it, but really we're lucky if we ever understand any more than a small piece about anything. The infinite of the universe is in each one of us. You're grace, faith. Hopelessness, despair. Violence and anger. Beauty. You overwhelm me.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“I thought...it was easy when I thought it was something to do with the flesh. But what I'm seeing is more than that. It's love, and love isn't a sin. So how can God be so cruel as to give that feeling to two men or two women if it's a sin? I've always believed God to be compassionate. Loving.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“I want you to marry me, Thomas." Marcus' attention had weight and heat on every exposed, raw part of him. "We can get a license in a state where it's legal, have a ceremony wherever you want, however you want. And I don't care if there's no law for it on the books, it will be the law between you and me and whatever God there is. I want it to be impossible for us to leave each other without a hell of a lot of paperwork, ugly custody battles over furniture, whatever.
"I want to marry you," he repeated. "I want you to know that every morning when you wake up and see me that I want to be there, that I made an oath to be there. To stand by you. And that there's no one else for me. Not ever.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“I was here, pet. I was always here. Even if you told me you needed me just for an hour, for this, I would have been there." Marcus spoke gruffly into his hair, holding him tighter. "Why is it so fucking hard for you to believe I love you?”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“What I have is surface. Grooming, good genetics, whatever. Whether you've rolled out of bed an hour ago without having had a shower for three days, or you're wearing a designer suit, there is a deep, perfect beauty to you that takes my breath away.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“The only thing that ever scared him was finding out there was something he couldn't do, so he damn well made sure there was anything he couldn't.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“At least she (Thomas' mom) knows what she wants is dead. What I want just refuses to be with me. Maybe I should compare notes with her on what's worse, for I swear to God sometimes I think if you were dead this would hurt less.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Oh, for Christ's sake. Nothing is going to make your boy straight, Elaine. I didn't drag him into anything. But you're absolutely right. This is a battle for his soul, and while you may think I'm Lucifer, you sure as hell aren't God. This isn't about you or me. It's about the gift that defines his soul more than you or I will ever hope to do. If he doesn't have that for himself, neither of us will have anything.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Accepting what people are, what they can't change and loving them with every part of yourself anyway. That's what love is about." He glared at Elaine. "You take that away from him, you make him believe that kind of love doesn't exist…It would be better for you to shoot him rather than destroy him inch by inch, year after year. If you do that, you're not saving his soul, you're killing it. If you'd look into his eyes for once, you'll see it. How we love is our soul.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“That's when I got it. The rough canvas. God paints our bodies over that, over our heart and soul. It's the eyes that tell us what we're really seeing, what's underneath. So all I painted in the picture were greens. Patterns, random slashes, shapes over shapes, shadows, emotions, it's all there.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“I can imagine you and us a million ways here, Thomas. I will make my home where you are, because you are my home. I don't know any way to say it any more clearly. So now the ball's in your court.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Thomas stood in the manacles, vibrating , overwhelmed with words he couldn't say. Didn't know if he knew how to say them, because they contained all the heartbreak of the world mixed with it's ephemeral joy. Waking to the aroma of breakfast when he was eight. Feeling the heat of the setting sun on his skin while falling asleep on Kate's back at ten. Turning and seeing Marcus for the very first time. Moments too powerful to be contained by the human heart and therefore having a peculiar way of making the soul hurt, as if there was something to mourn in the midst of the happiness. As if happiness itself couldn't exist without shadows to define it... ”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“See yourself the way I see you. Feel the way my hands touch you, think about the way I look at you. I see all of you, Thomas. You think I don't, but I do. Hide it, don't hide it, I know all of it, feel all of it. You're mine. Just let go. Let go and see it. I always have.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Pain. You overwhelm me," he said quietly. "And every time I see you or think of you, I can't grab a brush fast enough. I thought I couldn't paint you, but it turns out I've been painting you all along, from the beginning, before I even knew you.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“I wanted everything for him. I wanted to see him achieve every dream, embrace every desire. I wanted to protect him from anyone who would cause him harm or a moments pain, tear them apart with my bare hands. Never let him out of my sight, even as I wanted him to stretch out his wings as far as they could go and soar. And at the bottom, top and middle of it all, I just wanted to stand there, just that way forever. Not disturb him. Just look at him and love him. Do nothing but simply love him for everything he is, a creation too perfect to be anything but God's gift to the rest of us.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“The sub has the upper hand in a true Master and sub relationship, Thomas. Always. I can possess you only as long as you want to belong to me.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Love you...God, finally accepting it was as bad as dying.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Then give me your pain, Master. I can bear it as long as I know your lips will touch every mark when you're done, signing it as your work.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Thomas eyed the array of hair products on the corner of the tub and snorted. "God, I forget sometimes how gay you are.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Get out." Marcus' eyes went freezing cold, his face as hard mask, the cleaned but unstitched slash making him look far more dangerous. "I don't want to deal with this carp right now."
"I've never gotten in, so how the hell can I get out?”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“It's never going to be that way with us. Anything you say "stop" about, I respect. No apologies, no guilt on your part, no feeling like you've disappointed me. I want you to feel comfortable saying it. You want to get out of here now?.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Please touch me." He needed intimacy, the emotion behind the physical punch of what Marcus had just done to him.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Your voice started to get all low and sexy at the end. You practically purr like a tiger when you're about to get off.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Tell him... You think it's kinder not to, but it isn't.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“It was a tough night," Marcus said briefly, another humorless smile crossing his mouth. "But they got what they paid for." "Jesus," Thomas murmured. Marcus slanted a glance at him, and his green eyes were hard, brittle. "Don't think about it, pet. I don't. No one who lives it dwells on this fucking stuff. You just thank God or your own balls for getting yourself through it, pulling yourself up into something better. The day I see pity in your face, I want your fucking ass out of my life.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Shadows gripped him at the thought. If Thomas changed his mind once Marcos got his grief and emotional shit under control, if he tried to withdraw again... Marcus knew he didn't have the energy left to fight him. After all the harrowing years when he never let himself entertain the notion, even in his darkest moment, Marcus now knew he would have a compelling reason to take his own life.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Your have a purity I've lost, pet. But in some ways, the important ones, you're not naive. You understand the darkness without ever having been in it.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Angst is the indulgence of the middle class.”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
“Can I get back to fucking your brains out now?" Thomas grinned. "You forget how to be a Master? Why are you asking?”
― Joey W. Hill, quote from Rough Canvas
Joey W. Hill
Born date February 23, 1968
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“Struggling and suffering are the essence of a life worth living. If you're not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you're not demanding more from yourself - expanding and learning as you go - you're choosing a numb existence. You're denying yourself an extraordinary trip.”
― Dean Karnazes, quote from Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner
“The colonel breakfasted with the leisure of a fighter who has been clipped badly, hears four, and knows how to relax truly for five seconds or more.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Across the River and into the Trees
“who blamed Lee. Longstreet knew that somewhere”
― Jeff Shaara, quote from The Last Full Measure
“I know, Little Man, you are quick with the diagnosis of craziness when you meet a truth you don’t like. And you feel yourself as the ‘homo normalis’. You have locked up crazy people, and the normal people manage this world. Who then is to blame for all the misery? Not you, of course, you only do your duty, and who are you to have an opinion of your own? I know, you don’t have to repeat it. It isn’t you that matters, Little Man. But when I think of your newborn children, of how you torture them in order to make them into ‘normal’ human beings after your image.”
― Wilhelm Reich, quote from Listen, Little Man!
“People are delighted to accept pensions and gratuities, for which they hire out their labour or their support or their services. But nobody works out the value of time: men use it lavishly as if it cost nothing. But if death threatens these same people, you will see them praying to their doctors; if they are in fear of capital punishment, you will see them prepared to spend their all to stay alive.”
― Seneca, quote from On the Shortness of Life
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