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.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the concept of a divine author, suggesting that God creates flawed narratives that reflect a fear of women's autonomy in love.
In this quote, Joe Hill expresses skepticism about the nature of God as a storyteller in human affairs, implying that the narratives attributed to God are limited and reflect a fear of women's power in making their own choices about love. He portrays God as an unimaginative figure whose stories revolve around oppressive themes, undermining the complexity and autonomy of women's experience in determining love and relationships, thus asserting that the divine creator is less competent than the characters He creates.
In practice
In a discussion about women's rights, this quote could highlight the importance of individual choice in love.
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.
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.
Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.
And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.
It's dangerous to read the Internet about yourself when you're me. Or when you're anyone in the public eye.
It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible.
I enjoy the simplistic training and life in marathon. You run, eat, sleep, walk around - that's how life is. You don't get complicated. The moment you get complicated it distracts your mind.
Nothing can tend so much to humble us before the mercy and justice of God as the consideration of His benefits and our own sins. Let us, then, consider what He has done for us, and what we have done against Him; let us call to mind our sins in detail, and His gracious benefits in like manner, remembering that whatever there is of good in us is not ours, but His, and then we need not be afraid of vainglory or of taking complacency in ourselves.
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