Jeffrey Ford > Quotes

“No one gives a shit if you write a book or not.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Twilight Pariah

“To our benefit, death isn't affected by an economic failure, and it never takes a holiday. In addition, a bereaved rich man is easier to con than a poor one in the same condition. A poor man, straightaway, understands death to be inevitable, but it takes a rich man some time to see that the end can't be circumvented with the application of enough collateral.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Girl in the Glass

“He was a good con man, but not a great con man. He wasn't ruthless enough. He had all the tricks, all the techniques, the facility for it. That part if you'll excuse the expression, was in his blood. But he never really had the heart for it.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Girl in the Glass

“I hold no preconceived prejudice against anyone," he'd said, "because to do so is utter folly for someone in my line of work. It's only ignorance that causes individuals to label an entire race as either good or bad. These are generalities so broad as to be both worthless and dangerous. I deal only in specifics. God as they say, is in the details. I must focus on the unique traits of the individual in order to tailor an illusion that will ultimately enchant. To see others in this manner is to never give in to labeling. To fail to do this is the equivalent of putting on a blindfold. Do you understand? The devil is in the details.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Girl in the Glass

“Romance," said Antony. "A con so crazy that by the time the bullet's in the chamber, you don't know if you've taken someone or you've been taken.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Girl in the Glass

“Simplicity and subtlety make for the best con. A distraction should lead the mark's attention upward, either toward the sky or to some better vision of himself. Color signals danger. Try to appear to have as many eyes as possible.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Girl in the Glass

“As Schell had taught me, "a con starts when there is something you want and you are blocked from attaining it by certain obstacles. The good con artist elicits the assistance of those who mean to stand in the way of one's attainment by appealing to their vanity, pride, jealousy, ignorance, or fear. One must first throw into a pile the expected rules of engagement, morality, society, and thought, set them on fire, and then proceed. Think big, have confidence.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Girl in the Glass

“May God be everywhere you are about to look and absent where you already have.”
― Jeffrey Ford, Physiognomy

“I’d like to ask you a question, if I may.”
“What?”
“All these poems you’ve written and hidden—so many poems. Why?”
While she thought, morning broke and the birds sang in the garden. “Because I could not stop.”
― Jeffrey Ford, A Terror

“Illegal' takes on a whole new meaning when you're loaded like Barnes. The rich have a separate rule book. To them if it makes money, it can't be wrong.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Girl in the Glass

“In that moment, I realized how dangerous it was to keep company with the characters from books. They lived books lives of fierce deeds and deep yearning.”
― Jeffrey Ford, Ahab's Return: or, The Last Voyage

“It’s every man for himself,” he said, and went back to reading. After my mother had died and he’d been laid off from his machinist job over in Milton, he’d retreated into near silence and the print reality of other worlds. Connection was tough for him and only getting tougher as he aged. Maggie asked me once if the reason I wanted to become a writer was to somehow make contact with him.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Twilight Pariah

“Americans so dearly love to be fooled. —Charles Baudelaire”
― Jeffrey Ford, Ahab's Return, or, The Last Voyage

“I thought of a line from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “As idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Twilight Pariah

“Parents: so essential, yet sometimes like
something you've stepped in and cannot get off your shoe. What else is there but to love them?”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Empire of Ice Cream

“Even the streetcars moved at a more languorous pace, like great serpents swimming through a darkness made thick by the cast-off regrets of the day. I forestalled answering my own question by stopping at the corner of Thirty-third Street to peer across the avenue at the moonlit remains of what once had been the mansion of John Jacob Astor. I had read in the newspaper that his son, to spite the mother, was going to raze the old building and erect a fine hotel. There it sat, half dismantled, like the rotting carcass of some behemoth washed ashore in a painting by Vedder. Here was a testament to the corrosive power of the city’s new wealth. Even the old gods and their legacies were not protected from its onslaught. The new deity was fortune, and there was an army of Reeds willing to adjust their moral barometers in order to join the priesthood. Its catechism trickled down from the upper reaches of Manhattan Island all the way to the Lower East Side, where immigrant families chased the insubstantial spirit of what they could not readily grasp.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque

“This was a new type of Klan. They were still race haters, but they sold themselves to the populace on the platform of law and order. Imagine. There weren’t enough colored people out there on the island for them to get that worked up about, so they kind of transferred their energy into hating the Catholics, the Jews, the immigrants. They were down on what they considered the dissolution of the white race by all of the foreigners coming into this country.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Girl in the Glass

“Hanging out with you is like an extra job.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Twilight Pariah

“As we followed him down a hall to a back bedroom, he told us that he owned the house. “Unfortunately, it’s not haunted,” he said.”
― Jeffrey Ford, The Twilight Pariah