Top 300 Joseph Fink Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “KEVIN: We know that there has been some tension. Certain events that everyone regrets, although some regret them more than others. But we also know that nothing removes tension between rivals towns quite like a picnic, a smile, and a song. Sing louder. Louder. Good.”

— Joseph Fink

202. “I mean, I believe in mountains and all, but I understand it’s a controversial viewpoint.”

— Joseph Fink

203. “The drive was difficult, because at this point it seemed that everyone in town but the two of us had hopped onto the buzzing shadow entity train, and were loping around town as malevolent holes in our reality, emanating an energy that made the hairs on your arm stand and your bowels vibrate. Or maybe that was just the chemistry with Carlos I was feeling.”

— Joseph Fink

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

— Joseph Fink

205. “For her part, Diane did not have a good reason for why she wouldn’t tell Josh anything about his father. She didn’t have a good reason for most of what she did. Mostly, she went by what seemed right in the moment, and justified it to herself later, and in this way she was no different than anyone else she knew.”

— Joseph Fink

206. “You still need to work on a lot of things,” Diane did not say. “I’m sorry your father isn’t here,” she also did not say. “But I am trying so, so hard. I am, Josh. I am, I am, I am,” she did not say. As far as things go, her self-control was pretty good.”

— Joseph Fink

207. “They are asking that everyone dress up as the decline of the printed word in a society reverting to a state of brainless animality.”

— Joseph Fink

208. “The mail was junk: a couple of furniture catalogs, a credit card offer, a dead mouse, and a flyer with coupons for 50 percent off the moon. The faceless old woman who secretly lives in her home had censored the credit card offer, using charcoal to blot out entire lines and amounts. Diane looked through the coupons, considering what a great deal it would be if anyone actually wanted the moon. It’s a hideous rock, Diane thought. You couldn’t pay me to take it.”

— Joseph Fink

209. “She didn’t even notice right away that Evan was not at work. Same with Dawn. But as days passed, their absence overtook the mundane humdrum of office talk. Some thought Evan and Dawn had run off together. Diane was not comfortable enough with her co-workers to shame them for their gossiping.”

— Joseph Fink

210. “Jackie felt repulsed by Steve. She had no idea why. He had never been anything other than kind of her, kind to everybody. As they old saying went: ‘Not all windowless vans have residential surveillance equipment.’ In other words, not everything can be as good as it seems.”

— Joseph Fink

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

— Joseph Fink

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

— Joseph Fink

213. “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

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

— Joseph Fink

215. “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

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

— Joseph Fink

217. “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

218. “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

219. “D-Day is short for Dog Day, which happened during World War II, when we defeated the Germans by not letting them come over to pet our dogs anymore.”

— Joseph Fink

220. “You don’t have to be stoned to crack up at a friend’s fantastic, perfect non sequitur.”

— Joseph Fink

221. “It’s a kind of assault, this constant insistence that we can’t be publicly acknowledged. Sometimes an act as simple as a person recognizing you, your bulk, the tangibility of your skin. That can mean everything.”

— Joseph Fink

222. “Then she would drive to the pawnshop, dig up the doors from where they were hidden, and replace them unlocked at the front just in time for opening time, which was the moment her gut told her the shop should be open. She would sit there all day, doing what she did and no more than what she did, and then she would stop doing that and go home. There wasn’t much else to it, life. A person’s life is only what they do.”

— Joseph Fink

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

— Joseph Fink

224. “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

225. “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

226. “I don’t know who I am and I don’t understand the progression of time as it relates to me,” said Jackie. Leann nodded. “We’ve all been there.”

— Joseph Fink

227. “She drove home and grabbed the things she would need to check out a book: strong rope and a grappling hook, a compass, a flare gun, matches and a can of hair spray, a sharpened wooden spear, and, of course, her library card.”

— Joseph Fink

228. “The man in the tan jacket?′ Josie’s voice took on a new tone, one filled with interest and perhaps panic. Erika was back. Both of the Erikas. They sat on either side of Josie on the couch. Their faces were similar to the ones that a human uses to express fear. No, not fear. Concern. They looked concerned.”

— Joseph Fink

229. “Then you will die, but only for a little while.”

— Joseph Fink

230. “The study found widespread dissatisfaction with our town’s public library, and, when considering the facts, it’s easy to see why. The public computers for Internet use are outdated and slow. The lending period of fourteen days is not nearly long enough to read lengthier books, given the busy schedule of all our lives. The fatality rate is also well above the national average for public libraries.”

— Joseph Fink

231. “It will be difficult to help if you create a Culture of No, Diane.”

— Joseph Fink

232. “When nothing else works, eating sure does.”

— Joseph Fink

233. “The ocean is full of things that would like to kill you. And other things that would ignore or not understand you, and then eventually kill you. Because they do not have the same understanding or valuation of life and death as humans. There are still other things that you would probably kill, simply because you think they are beautiful, and you want to possess beautiful things because you believe that beauty and sentience are mutually exclusive.”

— Joseph Fink

234. “Most people in Night Vale get by with a cobbled-together framework of lies and assumptions and conspiracy theories.”

— Joseph Fink

235. “The mission of Night Vale has always been to make the mundane terrifying and the terrifying mundane.”

— Joseph Fink

236. “Diane, in Jackie’s mind, looked just like a woman who would be an active PTA mom, with her kind face and comfortable clothing. She also thought Diane looked like a woman who would be a loan officer, with her conservative makeup choices and serious demeanor. She would look like a pharmacist if she ever were to wear the standard white coat, gas mask, and hip waders.”

— Joseph Fink

237. “Sorry, listeners. I need to go make sure she’s all right. I take you now to the sound of a human stomach digesting, heavily amplified and electronically distorted.”

— Joseph Fink

238. “Jackie’s good arm was out the window, the sandy air tickling her skin with hundreds of inconsequential stings, a tangible Morse code saying something meaningless. Jackie.”

— Joseph Fink

239. “Another way to remember someone is to create more memories with that person. The more there is to forget, the longer forgetting takes.”

— Joseph Fink

240. “Settling in to be another clear night and pretty evening here in Night Vale. I hope all of you out there have someone to sleep through it with. Or, at least, good memories of when you did.”

— Joseph Fink

241. “If you like a thing, and only one place in town serves that thing, you’re going to be pretty excited by that thing, regardless of quality.”

— Joseph Fink

242. “Finally, most identity thefts occur when databases are not securely managed. So, my advice? Don’t ever end up in a database.”

— Joseph Fink

243. “After nonfiction was science fiction. No one knows why science fiction is kept separately form the rest of the nonfiction. Tradition is a powerful thing. These shelves were much less censored than the main nonfiction section, since science fiction tended to be about day-to-day stuff that everyone already knew.”

— Joseph Fink

244. “In breaking news, the sky. The earth. Life. Existence as an unchanging plain with horizons of birth and death in the faint distance.”

— Joseph Fink

245. “Jamillah was still holding the power drill. She liked to always carry it, just in case she found herself in a situation where it would be useful. And when you always carry a power drill, almost every situation seems like a situation in which a drill would be useful.”

— Joseph Fink

246. “I mean, I believe in mountains and all, but I understand it’s a controversial viewpoint. I would never force that viewpoint on others.”

— Joseph Fink

247. “We will investigate at some point in the future, when we feel like we are maybe more interested than we are now. Until then, we will continue on in ignorance, happy as we ever were.”

— Joseph Fink

248. “Nowhere, the tarantula felt nothing at all.”

— Joseph Fink

249. “The reading area was a beautifully crafted trap set by the librarians, but it was too perfect. Even the dumbest book lover – and anyone who would regularly choose to come in contact with books could not be a bright bulb, Jackie thought – wouldn’t fall for this.”

— Joseph Fink

250. “They kept moving past the racks of the Night Vale Daily Journal by the windows. Due to spiraling printing costs and the necessary layoff of nearly its entire staff, the Journal had long ago moved to an imagination-based format. The racks were empty except for a small note reminding you that if you imagined what a hypothetical Night Vale newspaper might look like, then you needed to send a check for $19.95 to the Daily Journal to cover your monthly Imagination Subscription.”

— Joseph Fink