Top 60 A.J. Finn Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Do I sound like a hillbilly saying that?”

— A.J. Finn

2. “Cotard delusion, a psychological phenomenon whereby the individual believes that he is dead.”

— A.J. Finn

3. “My dear girl, you cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there.”

— A.J. Finn

4. “My head was once a filing cabinet. Now it’s a flurry of papers, floating on a draft.”

— A.J. Finn

5. “I may do some good before I am dead.” – Jude, Part Sixth, Chapter 1.”

— A.J. Finn

6. “Sometimes I’ve got too many thoughts at once. It’s like there’s a four-way intersection in my brain where everyone’s trying to go at the same time.”

— A.J. Finn

7. “Through adversity to the stars.”

— A.J. Finn

8. “You can read all about it, if you like, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. DSM-5 for short. It’s always amused me, that title; it sounds like a movie franchise. Liked Mental Disorders.”

— A.J. Finn

9. “She’s lovely, a genuine redhead, with grass-green eyes and an archipelago of tiny moles trailing across her back.”

— A.J. Finn

10. “Ad astra per aspera, read the inscription. Through adversity to the stars.”

— A.J. Finn

11. “And I stand there in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing.”

— A.J. Finn

12. “I just miss him. I miss him, I love him.”

— A.J. Finn

13. “Watching is like nature photography: You don’t interfere with the wildlife.”

— A.J. Finn

14. “She practices yoga three times a week, tripping down the steps with her magic-carpet mat rolled beneath one arm, legs shrink-wrapped in Lululemon.”

— A.J. Finn

15. “A shut-in. No hero. No sleuth. I am locked in. I am locked out.”

— A.J. Finn

16. “Strangers on a Train.”

— A.J. Finn

17. “Something’s happening to me, through me, something dangerous and new. It’s taken root, a poison tree; it’s grown, fanning out, vines winding round my gut, my lungs, my heart.”

— A.J. Finn

18. “Popular film misquotes. “Play it again, Sam”: Casablanca, allegedly, except neither Bogie nor Bergman ever said it. “He’s alive”: Frankenstein doesn’t gender his monster; cruelly, it’s just “It’s alive.” “Elementary, my dear Watson” does crop up in the first Holmes film of the talkie era, but appears nowhere in the Conan Doyle canon.”

— A.J. Finn

19. “You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way, she said to me. Or, rather, I said it to myself. Life made me this way.”

— A.J. Finn

20. “Night Must Fall,” he reads. “It’s a good one to start with. Suspenseful but not scary.”

— A.J. Finn

21. “You live in a dream,” sneers Uncle Charlie. “You’re a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you’d find swine? Use your wits. Learn something.”

— A.J. Finn

22. “I’m trapped in a police car fondling my fat. This is a new low.”

— A.J. Finn

23. “The last flakes sifted down an hour ago, and now the midday sun floats in an aching-blue sky – a sky “not to warm the flesh, but solely to please the eye.” Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.”

— A.J. Finn

24. “If I don’t think, I can do it. If I don’t think. Don’t think. Thinking hasn’t gotten me anywhere so far. “The definition of insanity, Fox,” Wesley used to remind me, paraphrasing Einstein, “is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.” So stop thinking and start acting.”

— A.J. Finn

25. “I was fighting for my life. So I must not want to die. And if I don’t want to die, I’ve got to start living.”

— A.J. Finn

26. “One doesn’t often get a second chance. I want to stop being haunted.”

— A.J. Finn

27. “Jimmy Stewart en La ventana indiscreta.”

— A.J. Finn

28. “Help,” I shout, only it’s a whisper, creeping through my throat on tiptoe, smearing itself across my tongue. “He-elp,” I try again; this time my teeth bite into it, sparks raining from my mouth as though I’ve chewed a live wire, and my voice catches like a fuse, explodes. I scream.”

— A.J. Finn

29. “And if I don’t want to die, I’ve got to start living.”

— A.J. Finn

30. “They can withstand neglect; they can survive abuse; they can endure, even thrive, where adults would collapse like umbrellas.”

— A.J. Finn

31. “You can hear someone’s secrets and their fears and their wants, but remember that these exist alongside other people’s secrets and fears, people living in the same room.”

— A.J. Finn

32. “As I surface, the dream drains away like water. The memory, really. I try to scoop it up in my palms, but it’s gone.”

— A.J. Finn

33. “Now, movies that postdate Hitch: The Vanishing, with its sucker-punch finale. Frantic, Polanski’s ode to the master. Side Effects, which begins as a Big Pharma screed before slithering like an eel into another genre altogether.”

— A.J. Finn

34. “Shaw also said, alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.”

— A.J. Finn

35. “As Bernard Shaw said, I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation. As Shaw also said, alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life. Good old Shaw.”

— A.J. Finn

36. “I could dial directory assistance, call the house, warn her. I won’t. Watching is like nature photography: You don’t interfere with the wildlife.”

— A.J. Finn

37. “She’s come undone. That was a book, I believe.”

— A.J. Finn

38. “And I step into the light.”

— A.J. Finn

39. “The world is a beautiful place,” she insists, and she’s serious; her gaze is even, her voice level. Her eyes catch mine, hold them. “Don’t forget that.” She reclines, mashing her cigarette into the hollow of the bowl. “And don’t miss it.”

— A.J. Finn

40. “The definition of insanity, Fox, Wesley used to remind me, paraphrasing Einstein, is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different result.”

— A.J. Finn

41. “This is classic therapist argot: It sounds to me. What I’m hearing. I think you’re saying. We’re interpreters. We’re translators.”

— A.J. Finn

42. “Hey, when’s your birthday?” “You going to buy me something?” “Easy there.” “Coming up, actually,” I say. “So’s mine.” “November eleventh.” She gawks. “That’s my birthday, too.” “You’re kidding.” “I am not. Eleven eleven.” I lift my glass. “To eleven eleven.” We toast.”

— A.J. Finn

43. “She wears a butter-yellow sweater that exposes a terse slit of cleavage; her locket dangles there, a mountaineer above a gorge.”

— A.J. Finn

44. “But could I doom him to lifelong regret? I know how it feels; I know the ceaseless ache, the constant drone of it. I don’t want him to feel that way.”

— A.J. Finn

45. “Okay?” The word barrels down my tongue, elbows other words aside. “Okay.”

— A.J. Finn

46. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my time working with children, if I could whittle those years down to a single revelation, it’s this: They are extraordinarily resilient. They can withstand neglect; they can survive abuse; they can endure, even thrive, where adults would collapse like umbrellas.”

— A.J. Finn

47. “And old movies, of course, brought me and Ed together.”

— A.J. Finn

48. “Something I’ve noticed: In the absence of others, I swear more often and more loudly. Ed would be appalled. I’m appalled.”

— A.J. Finn

49. “He dropped by the next.”

— A.J. Finn

50. “I would leave the house to investigate, like Teresa Wright in Shadow of a Doubt.”

— A.J. Finn