King Sorrow Quotes

“Love was the secret language of twins. It was the private code of a husband and a wife. It was the telegraph system of best friends. When you had it, a glance could suffice for ten minutes of talk. When you loved someone enough, you did not simply remember them. Some part of them was copied into you forever and so when they were gone they weren’t gone.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“No one needed a magic wardrobe that opened into Narnia if they had a library card; if you had a library card, you had a thousand magic wardrobes to choose from, ten thousand.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“The problem with inviting the unnatural into your life is it might decide to stay.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“When I'm gone, it won't hurt anyone the way Cady hurt me ... That's why the world needs motherfuckers, I think. Motherfuckers hold the line. And if they get wiped out in the process, it's no big loss to anyone. The world dusts its hands off and moves on.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Here’s to pornography, whiskey, long walks, and good books. Make sure you get plenty of all four.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“The dark man fled across the snow and Arthur Oakes followed.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Truly evil people were always too stupid, too lost in their own paranoid daydreams, to know they were evil.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“When you were small you were scared to come down here, weren't you? Because, like all children, you secretly believed there was something hungry and evil waiting for you in the basement. And like all children, you were right.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Dragons are not hatched from eggs, of course, but from imaginations, from rotten dreams, from night terrors.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“I LOVE GOING ON ADVENTURES WITH MY FRIENDS,” Allie hollered. “AFTER WE ASSAULT THIS OLD LADY, WE SHOULD GET TACOS!”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Ask any novelist—an unstable, violent personality is a wonderful thing for advancing the plot.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Sorrow and love are a single coin - the one we pay as the price of our humanity. Take it away and we'd be the worst kind of poor. And it's a mistake to believe the value of a life is erased by anguish at the end. If there's one thing atheists and the devout can agree on, Colin, death is where you leave your suffering behind.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Historical note: every new leap in technology is powered by people’s desire to talk about their cats”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“bit like a document that has been heavily redacted by some government agency”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Your mistake,' King Sorrow said from Donna's mouth, his voice a good-humored, reverberating rumble, 'was believing you had any power to begin with... You want to know where I was born? I hatched in the cauldron of Mount Hekla, five thousand years before Christ. Upon my birth, the volcano erupted and choked the world with so much darkness and ash your ancestors, a gang of pitiful and incestuous monkeys, believed the time of judgment was at hand. And they were right, mate. It's been a time of judgment every since... and I am the judge.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Don't try and pretend you're a nice guy... And don't imagine you can manipulate me. I have a PhD in psychology. I know every trick in the book.'

'If you think empathy is a trick, then I'm even more sorry for you.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Gwen insisted that Scatterday was the secret day hidden between Friday and Saturday. Colin liked the idea of Scatterday . . . a pocket in time crammed full of junk, like a small child’s pocket, only instead of marbles and string it held dragons and trolls and sorcery. Allie said not only did Scatterday exist, but there was an extra number between midnight and one: dragonedy.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“It was funny, the way double murder put a damper on romance...Once you murdered someone you had to carry it forever. You went to bed with it and it was with you when you woke up.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“It was funny, the way double murder put a damper on romance.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“No one was ever in charge of a dragon. Some snakes were too big to catch by the tail.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Love was the secret language of twins. It was the private code of a husband and a wife. It was the telegraph system of best friends. When you had it”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“You're a monster.'

'Oh, now,' said King Sorrow from somewhere deep in the blackness of a bathroom. 'That's not fair to monsters, is it? I would've bit you in two by now, put you out of your misery, if it was up to the likes of me. You want some real cruelty done, you need a human, mate.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“I think you’re halfway there, Colin. God isn’t our egregore. We’re His. He doesn’t exist because we believe in Him. We exist because He believes in us.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“That peril, suffering, and fear prove life is a squalid struggle with no point, since it always ends in loss. He thinks—and you’ve said so too, Colin—that it proves if there is a God, he’s a sadistic war criminal, a bystander who watches while children drown. But that’s not what it proves. What it proves is that acts of love and sacrifice have real value—that they’re the only currency that matters.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Give me Nebraska. Your army will fence it in. If anyone tries to leave, they will be shot—no exceptions. I will have the electrical grid shut off. I will blight the fields to create mass starvation. I will keep fires burning, so the sky remains black with soot and the sun is never seen. I will ask for ninety-nine virgins a year and I will insist their deaths be broadcast on national TV in prime time. We will have our own Major League Baseball team, but they will only play home games, and at the end of every match the losing pitcher will be beheaded on the mound. I will poison the waters with my tears and allow only two beverages to the citizenry: Diet Dr Pepper and Schlitz.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“We can’t fight all the dragons ourselves, love,” Robin told her. “Let someone else have a turn. There are plenty of dragons to go around.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“The shooter, John Smith, supposedly suffered from the gift of prophecy.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Sorrow and love are a single coin—the one we pay as the price of our humanity. Take it away and we’d be the worst kind of poor.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“Life was no way to live. It was always over far too soon.”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow

“It was full dark, no stars,”
― Joe Hill, King Sorrow