Quotes from Rough Canvas

“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

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Popular quotes

“The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations--and absolutely nothing more. And through the development of this many-sidedness man may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed. In fact, this has already happened to him. Have you noticed that it is the most civilised gentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers, to whom the Attilas and Stenka Razins could not hold a candle, and if they are not so conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razins it is simply because they are so often met with, are so ordinary and have become so familiar to us. In any case civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves. They say that Cleopatra (excuse an instance from Roman history) was fond of sticking gold pins into her slave-girls' breasts and derived gratification from their screams and writhings. You will say that that was in the comparatively barbarous times; that these are barbarous times too, because also, comparatively speaking, pins are stuck in even now; that though man has now learned to see more clearly than in barbarous ages, he is still far from having learnt to act as reason and science would dictate. But yet you are fully convinced that he will be sure to learn when he gets rid of certain old bad habits, and when common sense and science have completely re-educated human nature and turned it in a normal direction. You are confident that then man will cease from INTENTIONAL error and will, so to say, be compelled not to want to set his will against his normal interests. That is not all; then, you say, science itself will teach man (though to my mind it's a superfluous luxury) that he never has really had any caprice or will of his own, and that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ, and that there are, besides, things called the laws of nature; so that everything he does is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of nature. Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will become exceedingly easy for him. All human actions will then, of course, be tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still, there would be published certain edifying works of the nature of encyclopaedic lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or adventures in the world.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Notes from Underground

“Sometimes you had to laugh if only to keep from crying.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from Crossroads of Twilight

“Sandry: "I am silly, now and then. My mother said I was, anyway."
Daja: "If you know, you can stop it."
Sandry: "Then you've never been silly or you'd know it just creeps up without any warning.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Sandry's Book

“I've married a friggin horse. And he bites.”
― P.C. Cast, quote from Divine By Mistake

“My heart didn't fail, someone failed my heart.”
― Jess Rothenberg, quote from The Catastrophic History of You and Me

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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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