Top 300 Joseph Fink Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “He was not so arrogant as to refer to his own death as The End, just one of billions of ends before The End. Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.”

— Joseph Fink

152. “Plus, not casting white people in roles for people of color is the correct thing to do. It’s not a noble or laudable thing to do. It is what you are supposed to do, so we corrected this, by casting a person of color in the role.”

— Joseph Fink

153. “What is terrifying, I think, about the World Government is not that the world is held under an iron fist, but that the world is sand scooped up in a sieve. The people running it have no more idea than us why there are lights in the sky above the Arby’s or why there are ghost cars. Terrifying, right? I think the grand conspiracy of our world is just an argument between idiots.”

— Joseph Fink

154. “All this time he had lived for the future. The future had been the firm ground he stood on, and the present was only the slight haze in the air. But now he understood that the future was a joke without a punch line and that whatever he had in the present was what he would always have. He did not have much in the present.”

— Joseph Fink

155. “Each day the sun rises and sets. The moon pulls the tides. Our hearts beat. Our loved ones love us back. And we share our inhales and exhales with the great organism that is our tiny planet.”

— Joseph Fink

156. “They’re all achievable, realistic goals, but by turning objectives into mere fantasies, she never had to go through the trouble of achieving or maintaining them.”

— Joseph Fink

157. “Dear, be kind to the mothers of Night Vale. Have pity on us. It’ll be no easier for Diane. Things go strange here. Your children forget you, and the courses of their lives get frozen. Or they change shapes every day, and they think that just because they look completely different you won’t be able to recognize them. But you always will. You always know your child, even when your child doesn’t know you.”

— Joseph Fink

158. “Fear is a reasonable response to life.”

— Joseph Fink

159. “You, of course, should always chant when you wash your hands. It is only hygienic.”

— Joseph Fink

160. “Fair,′ Josie said. ‘Then we’ll talk about a man in a tan jacket holding a deerskin suitcase.’ She clutched her left hand against her side like she had a pain there, but no pain registered on her face.”

— Joseph Fink

161. “Mountains, real or not, ring this desert like the rim of an empty dinner plate. Scattered sparsely along the flat middle are small towns with names like Red Mesa, Pine Cliff, and, right in the center, Night Vale. Above Night Vale are helicopters, protecting citizens from themselves and others. Above the helicopters are stars, which are completely meaningless. Above the stars is the void, which is completely meaningful.”

— Joseph Fink

162. “You always know your child, even when your child doesn’t know you.”

— Joseph Fink

163. “Parents sometimes show love through velocity.”

— Joseph Fink

164. “Now, there is some concern about the fact that, given we are in the middle of a desert, there is no actual water at the waterfront. And that is a definite drawback, I agree.”

— Joseph Fink

165. “Josie produced a glass of water, through practiced manipulation of cupboards and valves and municipal plumbing. Neither she nor Jackie was impressed with the human miracle represented by how easily the glass of water was produced.”

— Joseph Fink

166. “Sometimes it is easy to forget which things in the world can feel pain and which cannot.”

— Joseph Fink

167. “A tarantula inched between the keyboard and mouse, as if it were playing the game where it can only move one leg at a time, which is a popular game with tarantulas.”

— Joseph Fink

168. “It had been a mistake to accept what the man in the tan jacket had offered her. She didn’t know what it was, or what it meant, or what information it was trying to convey and to whom. But she knew that it had changed something. The world was slipping into her life. And she had to push it out, starting with this slip of paper, and the man in the tan jacket.”

— Joseph Fink

169. “It’s not other people that hurt us, but what we feel about them.”

— Joseph Fink

170. “I never grow older.” “I guess we all thought that once.” The desert went on so far out into the distance that it was easy to imagine that it constituted the entire world.”

— Joseph Fink

171. “The man in the tan jacket was running out to the desert. She could just barely see him at the edge of the parking lot’s radius of light. His arms were swinging wildly, his suitcase swinging along. His legs were flailing, great puffs of sand kicked up behind him, his head thrown back, sweat running down his face visible even from where she sat. The kind of run that was from something and not toward. Then he left the faint edge of the light and was gone.”

— Joseph Fink

172. “Diane, what does it mean when you know you’re feeling something but you don’t know what that feeling is?” Diane considered this seriously for a long time. “It means you’re growing older.” “I never grow older.” “I guess we all thought that once.”

— Joseph Fink

173. “Along those lines, to get personal for a moment, I think the best way to die would be swallowed by a giant snake. Going feet first and whole into a slimy maw would give your life perfect symmetry.”

— Joseph Fink

174. “I remember being almost all of the ages I have been.”

— Joseph Fink

175. “Imagine a fifteen-year-old boy. Nope. That was not right at all. Try again.”

— Joseph Fink

176. “All of these men. Each one carrying a mystery that’s not as interesting as he thinks. I don’t want their mysteries. I want a life on an even level.”

— Joseph Fink

177. “I raised you for fifteen years. I fed you and clothed you. I loved you and still do. I love you because you have been with me for fifteen years. I am your mother because we have been together your whole childhood. I have earned you as my son.”

— Joseph Fink

178. “The Night Vale Unified School District indicated that fewer than one in five tarantulas graduate from high school. Indeed, most spiders never even enroll in public education, choosing to instead spin webs and eat smaller insects.”

— Joseph Fink

179. “She didn’t love the movie as a movie, but she appreciated it as a familiar comfort.”

— Joseph Fink

180. “Diane turned and pointed in the direction of Evan’s cubicle. But instead of a cubicle, there was a fern and an empty chair beneath a framed photo of a cloud. She wasn’t sure which cloud it was.”

— Joseph Fink

181. “Lady, I’ve trained for months. I’ve taken down your helicopters with only a slingshot. I’ve looked a librarian right in the area where most creatures would have eyes. You. Do. Not. Scare me.”

— Joseph Fink

182. “Each death leads to smaller, invisible deaths inside the hearts of those left behind.”

— Joseph Fink

183. “It seemed safer to not have friends or hobbies. To sit at work, head down, doing her job, and then sit at home, glass after glass of orange juice, radio on, safe from anything that might disrupt her routine.”

— Joseph Fink

184. “They had been friends since sophomore Spanish class, but Noelle had been fifty-eight at the point she had finally asked Jackie that question, and spoke in tones that felt sickening parental to Jackie. Jackie had said so, and Noelle had become openly condescending, and they had both hung up, and she and Noelle had never spoken again. People who grow older think they are so wise, she thought. Like time means anything at all.”

— Joseph Fink

185. “Scientists say that the twenty percent must go somewhere because of something to do with something called “thermodynamic laws,” but police officials reminded us that scientists are comedians and that they should stick to comedy.”

— Joseph Fink

186. “Of course, angels do not exist. It is illegal to consider their existence, or even to give them a dollar when they forget bus money and start hovering around the Ralphs asking for change.”

— Joseph Fink

187. “He drives to his job. His car is nice. Nicer than he can afford, but just as nice as he hopes he can soon afford. His car is aspirational.”

— Joseph Fink

188. “The tarantula stared at the ceiling not knowing at all what a ceiling is.”

— Joseph Fink

189. “Happiness is not negated by subsequent pain.”

— Joseph Fink

190. “But belief is only step one. Action is step two. Fighting for what you believe is step two. Solidarity is step two. Unity is step two.”

— Joseph Fink

191. “We all chose to stand down and hope change would be won for us, and not by us.”

— Joseph Fink

192. “Diane never really spoke to Evan at work. She had seen him many times. They had shared comments at birthday and pinata parties like “Good cake, right?” or “Champagne at work! Great!” or “The sky seemed especially vast and unending this morning.” The usual chitchat.”

— Joseph Fink

193. “Colorful posters with appealing statements like “Get into a good book this summer” and “We are going to force you into a good book this summer” and “You are going to get inside this book and we are going to close it on you and there is nothing you can do about it” have appeared overnight around the library entrance and in local shops and businesses...”

— Joseph Fink

194. “Today is the last day of your life up to this point.”

— Joseph Fink

195. “You believe in mountains, right? Not everyone does.”

— Joseph Fink

196. “Diane suddenly felt like the words she was saying were twisting in her mouth and coming out as different words altogether.”

— Joseph Fink

197. “The Night Vale Medical Board has issued a new study indicating that you have a spider somewhere on your body at all times but especially now. The study said that further research would be needed to determine exactly where on your body this spider is and what its intentions are, only that it is definitely there and is statistically likely to be one of the really ugly ones.”

— Joseph Fink

198. “Her body no longer felt young. All of her energy had been robbed from her. She felt old, looked young, was neither.”

— Joseph Fink

199. “Troy does not get to be your father simply because he participated in your creation. Troy does not get to earn your love as a son because you are biologically his. I have done the work. I have put in the time. I have loved you. Troy does not get to be my equal in your life because he has not earned it. I need to protect myself. And I need to protect you.”

— Joseph Fink

200. “Eventually, on the day she finally died, one of things that ran through her mind was: Well, at least I won’t have to remember that anymore.”

— Joseph Fink