Joseph Finder > Quotes

“I would argue that coffee has been far more important to literature than alcohol.”
― Joseph Finder

“As the saying goes not every conspiracy is a theory.”
― Joseph Finder, Buried Secrets

“And obstructing justice, which is another felony.”
― Joseph Finder, High Crimes: A Novel

“I’ve always hated business breakfasts; I believe Oscar Wilde had a point when he said that only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
― Joseph Finder, Extraordinary Powers

“You know what I always say—never let an asshole rent space in your head.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them. —JOSEPH CONRAD”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Inscribed on the back was a line from Virgil in Latin: Audentes fortuna juvat. Fortune favors the bold. He’d been bold all right, but Fortune hadn’t gotten the memo.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“He glanced at me, then chuckled. “Sprezzatura’s an Italian word. Means the art of making something difficult look easy.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Stay focused on the now. Get through this, leave the long-term choices for the future.”
― Joseph Finder, Judgment

“Surely you know the Thirty-Six Stratagems.” I shook my head. “The ancient Chinese art of deception.” “Oh, right. Sun Tzu. Jay Stoddard’s favorite.” “Forget Sun Tzu’s Art of War. That’s so commonplace.” He held up a gnarled, age-spotted finger. “Far more interesting than Sun Tzu is Chu-ko Liang. Perhaps the most brilliant military strategist ever. One of his stratagems was to defeat your enemy from within. Infiltrate the enemy’s camp in the guise of cooperation or surrender. Then, once you’ve discovered the source of his weakness, you strike.” Somehow the setting—the visitors’ room of the Altamont Correctional Facility—made my father’s advice a little less authoritative. As I walked out of the visitors’ room, I savored a feeling of relief. Because at that moment I knew that my brother was alive.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Challenge is tough. It needs efforts, energy and time.”
― Joseph Finder

“The rain was pattering hypnotically on the plane’s exterior.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Mrs. Heller, I’m Dr. Yurovsky. Can you hear me?” Lauren considered replying, then decided not to bother. Too much effort. The words weren’t coming out the way she wanted. “Mrs. Heller, if you can hear me, I’d like you to wiggle your right thumb.” That she definitely didn’t feel like doing. She blinked a few times, which cleared her vision a little. Finally, she was able to see a man with a tall forehead and long chin, elongated like the man in the moon. Or like a horse. The face came slowly into focus, as if someone were turning a knob. A hooked nose, receding hair. His face was tipped in toward hers. He wore a look of intent concern. She wiggled her right thumb.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Listen,” I said. “There was once this legendary French acrobat named Charles Blondin, okay? He was famous in the nineteenth century for doing these impossible daredevil tightrope-walking stunts. He strung a rope across Niagara Falls, a thousand feet long. And this crowd gathered and he walked on the tightrope over the falls, hundreds of feet above the gorge, and the crowd went crazy when he got to the other side, clapping and cheering.” Gabe gave me a skeptical glance. “Yeah?” “And then he said to the crowd, ‘Do you believe I can do it again?’ and the crowd cheered, ‘Yes!’ And he did it. And the crowd cheered even louder, and he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it wearing a blindfold?’ And some people in the crowd got scared and shouted, ‘No, don’t do it,’ and others said, ‘Yes! You can do it!’” “And he fell,” Gabe said. I shook my head. “He did it, and the crowd cheered even louder, and he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it on stilts this time?’ And the crowd shouted out, “Yes! You can do it!’ And he did it, and the crowd roared and got even wilder. So then he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it pushing a wheelbarrow along the rope?’ And the crowd roared and cheered and said, ‘Yes!’ And Blondin said, ‘You really think I can? You believe it?’ And they shouted, ‘Yes! Yes, you can!’ ” Despite himself, despite his teenage cynicism, he was actually listening. For a moment he almost seemed to be a child again, listening to a bedtime story. “Is this true?” “Yes.” “He actually did it?” “Yep. He did it. He walked across the tightrope hundreds of feet above the gorge pushing a wheelbarrow, and when he made it to the other side the audience had grown huge and frenzied and totally worked up and they cheered. Really went crazy. So Blondin said, ‘Do you believe I can do it again but this time pushing a man in this wheelbarrow?’ And the crowd roared and said, ‘Yes!’ He said, ‘You really believe I can do it?’ And they all went, ‘Yes, definitely! You can do it! We believe in you! Yes! Absolutely!’ By that time the crowd was completely behind him. They thought he could do anything. So Blondin said, ‘Then who will volunteer to sit in the wheelbarrow?’ And the crowd suddenly went quiet. Totally silent. And he said, ‘What’s the matter? You don’t believe in me anymore?’ And they were silent for a long time before someone from the crowd finally said, ‘Yes, we believe in you. But not that much.’ ” “Huh. Did anyone ever volunteer to get in the wheelbarrow?” I shrugged. “How’d the guy die?” “In bed. Forty years later. From diabetes.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“You know what’s wrong with the world today, bro? The computers. They’re ruining the human race.” “Computers?” “You ever see elks mate?” Russell said.”
― Joseph Finder, Power Play

“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.   —HONORÉ DE BALZAC”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Remember the old guy with the bell?”
― Joseph Finder, The Fixer

“Very American. You listen to propaganda. Watch silly movies”
― Joseph Finder, The Oligarch's Daughter

“She opened the aluminum screen door and shook his hand. Something about his unhandsome face made him seem trustworthy.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Then came yet more vodka. Paul was now blearily drunk. He’d learned that Russians don’t sip their vodka. They knock it back.”
― Joseph Finder, The Oligarch's Daughter

“She swallowed. “But I came here as a little kid, around six.” She shrugged, seeming to signal that she was bored with the topic, didn’t want to talk about it. “That’s why your English is so good. Do you”
― Joseph Finder, The Oligarch's Daughter

“But the reason that writers like Harlan and Lee don’t outline is that they enjoy the serendipity, the surprises that arise when they’re not constricted by the steel girdle of an outline. And I get that too. Some of the best plot twists in my work have been ones that I didn’t plan on, including the ending to PARANOIA. One of the great pleasures of writing fiction is living in the story so that you “experience” it the way your characters do.”
― Joseph Finder

“He was convinced this was a bribe, a kickback, to some Pentagon big shot, and he wanted proof. But that was a tall order, even to someone as brilliant as your brother. It’s a little like understanding algebraic combinatorics if you still don’t get long division.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“The kid scared her sometimes, he was so smart. She wondered where he inherited it. Not from her gene pool, that was for sure. Richard, her first husband and Gabe’s father, was smart enough but no genius. She also wondered from time to time whether being so precocious made him an outcast at his private boys’ school. It couldn’t be easy.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“What’s your point?” He spun around in his chair and took a brown file folder from a wire rack on the credenza behind him next to a couple of generic office plants. He opened it, took out a sheet of paper, and looked at it for a moment. Then he handed it to me. It was a fax from a bank in the Caymans called Transatlantic Bank & Trust (Cayman) Limited, located on Mary Street in George Town, Grand Cayman. A copy of a copy of a copy, festooned with smudges and photocopier artifacts. It was a letter from Roger, on Gifford Industries letterhead, to the bank’s manager. A letter of instruction.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“The guy standing behind him—cute, dark-haired, the innocent face of a boy and the body of a linebacker—looked barely thirty. “How’s it going?” he said, smiling, and she couldn’t help smiling back. They each took out leather badge holders and flipped them open. She saw only a flash of gold, a glint of silver. The older one sat slowly, gingerly, on the only chair, as if he had a bad back. “How are you feeling, Mrs. Heller?” His partner went scrounging for another chair from somewhere beyond the blue curtains, the boundaries of her world.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“But arguendo, as the lawyers say—just for the sake of argument—let’s say my employees have been applying pressure on your brother’s wife. Why would they do that if we’d taken Roger prisoner? Where’s the sense in that?” “Because he left something behind, and you want it.” “Now you’re starting to make sense. You’re half-right.” “Am I?” “Absolutely. He does have something we want. That’s absolutely true. But I doubt he left it behind. That doesn’t fit with my understanding of your brother’s character. Though maybe that’s presumptuous. You know him far better than we do. Am I wrong to assume that he takes after your father?”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“After all, as the old saw has it, lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.”
― Joseph Finder, Extraordinary Powers

“And we don’t really know who he is.”
“Whatever they throw at him, he’s still the man I fell in love with.”
Jackie stopped and turned to look directly at Claire. “But you don’t know who that man is. He’s not the man you thought he was—he’s not the man you loved.”
“Oh, now, what does that mean, really? When you come right down to it? I wasn’t being fatuous or naïve when I said he’s the man I fell in love with. Whoever he is, I got to know him as he was, for what he was. I loved him—love him—for who he is, who I know him to be. Everyone has a past, everyone conceals something. No one’s ever totally open about their past, whether they’re hiding stuff intentionally or not, whether it’s their sexuality or—”
“And there you go, rationalizing it.” Jackie raised her voice. “You don’t know, bottom line, who he is and whether he did what they say he did—”
“I know he didn’t do what they’re charging!”
“You don’t know anything about him, Claire. If he could lie to you about his family, his parents, his childhood, his college, practically his whole fucking life, do you really think he couldn’t lie to you about this?”
― Joseph Finder, High Crimes

“I had to assume, of course, that every word Koblenz had told me, including “and” and “the,” was a lie. That was a given. But I operated on that assumption most of the time anyway: Washington, D.C., is to lying what Hershey, Pennsylvania, is to chocolate.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished