It was something... the way a person's life picked up speed, the way a life was like a bullet aimed at one final target, impossible to slow or turn aside, and like the bullet, you were ignorant of what you were going to hit, would never know anything except the rush and the impact.
Interpretation
Life moves forward uncontrollably towards a final moment, with uncertainty about the outcome.
In this quote, Joe Hill reflects on the nature of life as an unstoppable force, much like a bullet being fired. He emphasizes the inevitability of life’s trajectory towards a final destination, where we remain largely unaware of what lies ahead, experiencing only the exhilarating rush of living and the eventual impact of our journey.
In practice
This quote can inspire a graduation speech about the unpredictability of life's path.
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.
The mad sometimes drilled holes in their own heads to let the demons out. To relieve the pressure of thoughts they could no longer bear. Jude understood the impulse. Each beat of his heart was a fresh and staggering blow felt in the nerves behind his eyes and in his temples. Punishing evidence of life.
I see God now as an unimaginative writer of popular fictions, someone who builds stories around sadistic and graceless plots, narratives that exist only to express His terror of a woman's power to choose who and how to love, to redefine love as she sees fit, not as God thinks it ought to be. The author is unworthy of His own characters.
Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours.
The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sun-dial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions.
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.
I am much inclined to live from my rucksack, and let my trousers fray as they like.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.