Top 300 Joseph Fink Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

153. “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

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

— Joseph Fink

155. “It is a terrible, terrible beauty that I do not understand.”

— Joseph Fink

156. “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

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

— Joseph Fink

158. “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

159. “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

160. “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

161. “Parents sometimes show love through velocity.”

— Joseph Fink

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

— Joseph Fink

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

— Joseph Fink

164. “And now a word from our sponsors. Or not now, but later. Much later. You won’t know when it happens. It’ll be just one of many words you’ll encounter that day. But it will come leaden with unseen meaning and consequence, and it will slowly spread throughout your life, invisibly infecting every light moment with its heaviness. Our sponsors cannot be escaped. You will see their word. And you will never know.”

— Joseph Fink

165. “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

166. “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

167. “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

168. “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

169. “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

170. “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

171. “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

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

— Joseph Fink

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

— Joseph Fink

175. “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

176. “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

177. “He’s a scientist. Above all things, scientists are protectors of our world. “Scientist is another word for hero,” Mayor Cardinal was fond of saying. They use science to not only learn things but also to change those things so that everything is better going forward. Just like the scientist who cured polio, or that couple who invented radiation, or the astrologers who write our futures for us.”

— Joseph Fink

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

— Joseph Fink

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

— Joseph Fink

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

— Joseph Fink

181. “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

182. “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

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

— Joseph Fink

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

— Joseph Fink

185. “I love you,” she called, hoping it wasn’t too late. “I love you too,” he said back, not loudly enough to be heard.”

— Joseph Fink

186. “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

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

— Joseph Fink

188. “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

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

— Joseph Fink

190. “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

191. “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

192. “No,′ she shouted. She shouted it over and over because she didn’t know what she could do to change anything and at least shouting made her feel better. No one could hear except the house and the faceless old woman who secretly lives in it.”

— Joseph Fink

193. “History is us squinting into the past, mistaking millions of tiny vibrations in all directions for unified, unidirectional movements by entire civilizations.”

— Joseph Fink

194. “Distance is confusing,” the stranger would tell people, anyone who would listen. “So is time.”

— Joseph Fink

195. “He’ll be what he’ll be. And we’ll all learn to be okay with whatever that is.”

— Joseph Fink

196. “Jackie’s eyes burned. She wasn’t sure if it was an allergic reaction. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this sensation. She touched the corner of her eye. It was wet. There was water coming from her eyes and trickling down her cheeks, and she knew she was crying but she wasn’t sure if she had ever cried before.”

— Joseph Fink

197. “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

198. “Some people prefer to make their homes so neat that there is no evidence of life anywhere at all.”

— Joseph Fink

199. “The City Council ended the conference by devouring a raw potato in quick, small bites of their sharp teeth and rough tongues. No follow-up questions were asked, although there were a few follow-up screams.”

— Joseph Fink

200. “As they stepped outside into the sandy dusk, the bell on the door jingled faintly in Jackie’s mind like a favorite song to which she could no longer quite remember the tune.”

— Joseph Fink