Joseph Finder Quotes & Sayings

I nodded sagely. "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." Masur looked at me quizzically. "Dan Quayle said that," I added. Whether he actually did or not, I liked the quote. — Joseph Finder

She rose as Leland came over to her desk and hugged her. He was tall and rotund, with arched bushy eyebrows and sagging jowls, a large head and rosy cheeks and a white crew cut. Those who met him for the first time found him physically intimidating, and indeed, in repose, he often wore an imperious expression, made even more threatening by his arched brows. — Joseph Finder

You make Gifford Industries sound like some sort of two-bit Mafia-owned New Jersey garbage-hauling company." I thought of a few rejoinders - I'm just wired that way - but I held my tongue. — Joseph Finder

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

Then I reached the second building and saw the conflagration. A bonfire twenty feet high. The wreck of a Hummer, its carcass barely visible behind the veil of flame. — Joseph Finder

As far as I could see, there weren't any fiber-optic sensors buried in the ground next to the perimeter fence. That would have been outrageously costly. Unnecessary, too. Instead, the facility was protected by a twelve-foot chain-link fence, six-gauge galvanized steel - extremely difficult to cut through - and topped by coils of razor wire. — Joseph Finder

We were wrapping up our Monday morning Risk Committee meeting, which was basically twelve of the firm's most senior staff members sitting around the big conference table and voting on which cases to take and which to turn down. It was your typical undercaffeinated Monday morning gathering: stifled yawns and low energy, throat-clearing and doodling, and furtive glances at BlackBerrys. Except for Jay, who paced around the room because he couldn't sit still for more than five minutes. — Joseph Finder

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

The pitch we used to convince companies to spend $50 million bucks for one of our planes was that it wasn't simply a means of transportation; oh no - it was 'a productivity tool'. It allowed an executive to make good use of his travel time and a relaxed and refreshed executive could seal the deal much more effectively than his travel-worn counterpart. Yeah, right. You can always justify any obscene luxury on the grounds of productivity... — Joseph Finder

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

Often? That's a relative concept when you're in here." He licked his lips. They were chapped, startlingly red against the snow white of his Methuselah beard. — Joseph Finder

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

Here's the thing about close combat in real life: It's almost always over in a matter of seconds. Not like in the movies, where your hero has the luxury to strategize and maneuver and grapple for minutes on end. Fortunately, when your life is in danger, your brain kicks in. Deep inside your brain this little almond-shaped gland called the amygdala sends out the signal to make your body start pumping out dopamine and adrenaline and cortisol. Time seems to slow, your focus sharpens, you suddenly start perceiving way more stimuli than normal. Neurologists call this tachypsychia. Everyone else calls it the fight-or-flight response. Cavemen who didn't have it got eaten by saber-toothed tigers. So I made a quick decision. I could either be incapacitated by a Taser, or I could put myself within the reach of Bondarchuk's fists. No choice. — Joseph Finder

SHE FELT a hard pinch on her neck. "Hey!" she protested. Her eyelids flew open. The light was unbearably bright, just as painful, but everything was gauzy and indistinct, like there was a white scrim over everything. She wondered whether she'd fallen back asleep for several hours. — Joseph Finder

He glanced at me, then chuckled. "Sprezzatura's an Italian word. Means the art of making something difficult look easy. — Joseph Finder

As you speed along the highway of life ... you might pause and consider. When everything's coming your way, maybe you're driving in the wrong lane. — Joseph Finder

You said electronic lock. I didn't know it was a TL-30X6." "I don't like your tone, Merlin. You sound very pessimistic. Maybe even defeatist." "Heller, listen to me. I brought my StrongArm safe cracker diamond-core drill bits, okay? But drilling through one of these, that's a five-hour job at least. That mother's made from inch-and-a-half-thick steel and cobalt-carbide matrix hardplate, okay?" "If you say so. — Joseph Finder

There is nothing we fear so much as the unknown, and the Surgeon was not going to enlighten her. — Joseph Finder

Did a few poor souls die because of the Big Dig? Son, a hundred men died building the Hoover Dam. A thousand men died building the Erie Canal. Four hundred Chinamen died building the transcontinental railroad. How about the Panama Canal? One of the greatest engineering feats in history? Thirty thousand men died building it. Ambitious projects always cost lives, son. That's the truth. Have you ever visited the great pyramids of Giza? — Joseph Finder

Gabe's room was as dark as a cave. He was asleep under the covers, a barely discernible lump. — Joseph Finder

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

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

Ms. Heller," said the man, "if you can hear me, say something, will you?" "What do you want, I'm shouting!" Lauren said at the top of her voice. "Now I see it," one of the female voices said. "Like she's trying to talk. I don't know what she said." "I think she said 'Ow. — Joseph Finder

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

The truth was, Roger and I hadn't been close since Dad's trial. Maybe that was a euphemistic way of putting it. I didn't like the guy, and he didn't like me either. We barely tolerated each other. — Joseph Finder

What does that look like to you?" he said. "A forgery." He shrugged, snorted quietly. "That's right, Heller. We have teams of forgers at work creating phony documents just for you." His sarcasm was subtle. "Now do you see? Starting to recognize your brother's modus operandi? Steal a bunch of money, then, when you realize that you've messed with the wrong guys, do the cowardly thing and run? Wonder where he got that from." "Screw you." I no longer felt bad about making up that story about his cigars. "Oh, believe me, it's the truth. Maybe to Victor Heller's sons that's nothing more than loose change you find under your sofa cushions. But not to me. And certainly not to Allen Granger. — Joseph Finder

You know what I always say - never let an asshole rent space in your head. — 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

She smiled, nodded, and kept walking. She waved her badge at the proximity sensor, stepped into the revolving door, and entered the cavernous atrium. Right in the center, surrounded by tropical foliage, was a huge bronze globe, the continents sculpted in sharp relief. On the front of the globe, set at a jaunty angle, was the Gifford Industries logo, which couldn't have been more hokey: retro squared-off streamlined script that must have looked futuristic when it was designed in the 1930s. A couple more people waved at her, flashed sympathetic looks, and she ducked into the express elevator to the twenty-fourth floor. She slid her security card into the slot, and the elevator rose. The lights in the executive suite were already on, which surprised her. She was normally the first one in. She passed her prox badge against the sensor until it beeped, then pushed open the glass doors. When she rounded the corner, she saw someone sitting at her desk. Noreen Purvis. 23. — Joseph Finder

I can't tell you that, sir." The woman's voice had gone from bored-but-friendly to officious-and-stern. — Joseph Finder

IF YOU took a really close look at some of the biggest, most notorious scandals of the last thirty or so years, you'd find Jay Stoddard lurking somewhere in the shadows. As an investigator or a fixer or an adviser, I mean. Whether it was the Iran-Contra hearings in the Reagan days or a Canadian media mogul on trial for fraud. Or one of a dozen Congressional sex scandals. And a whole lot more situations that might have exploded into ugly public imbroglios if it hadn't been for Stoddard's work. — Joseph Finder

I got a stone in my shoe, Mr. Corleone,' " I said, quoting from the third Godfather movie. — Joseph Finder

Burris answered with an obscenity, and suddenly he lunged at me. I saw him move a split second too late. He slammed me against the side of a building, cracking my head hard against the brick. With his right hand, he clamped my throat just below the Adam's apple and pincered hard. He was strong, even stronger than I expected, and he put his whole overdeveloped body into it. At the same time, he pinioned my left arm with his right shoulder and grabbed my right hand, just above the wrist, and jammed his right knee into the inside of my leg. Now I knew for sure he'd really been a Navy SEAL. He was doing everything by the book. Which was good, actually. — Joseph Finder

As the saying goes not every conspiracy is a theory. — Joseph Finder

Sex, greed, debauchery - I love it. Brian Azzarello is brilliant. — Joseph Finder

The man was remarkably . . . well, homely. Ugly, not to put too fine a point on it. His face was deeply pitted with scars, obviously the victim of a terrible case of adolescent acne. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and had thinning brown hair, round shoulders, a pigeon chest. — Joseph Finder

Heller," he called after me. "I don't know what you have up your sleeve, but I suggest you not bother. Like Sun Tzu said: 'All battles are won or lost before they're fought. — Joseph Finder

He was a fixer. He knew everyone who counted. He understood how things really worked in this town, as opposed to what they taught you in civics class or what you read in the papers, and he had a strong enough stomach to deal with all the creepy-crawlies you found when you turned over the rock. — Joseph Finder

It's better than the Green Line," Galvin said with a — Joseph Finder