Joseph Fink Quotes

She loved him the way one loves an old bridge or a wool sweater or the sound of a growing tulip.

What did Diane know about this? What was her connection? Could she be the mastermind behind the blond man and the man in the tan jacket holding a deerskin suitcase and maybe even Jackie's mother's strange behavior?

Life should be like a basket of chicken wings: salty, full of fat and vinegar, and surrounded by celery you'll never actually eat, even when you're greedily sopping up the last viscous streaks of buffalo sauce from the wax paper with your spit-stained index finger. Yes,

One death has already been attributed to the Glow Cloud.

But listen, it's probably nothing. If we had to shut down the town for every mysterious event that at least one death could be attributed to, we'd never have time to do anything, right?

The universe is unraveling. It still is. We won the day. We won the battle. We won whatever unit of measurement you care to say that we won. We returned to the dangerous equilibrium we had before, which we can only assume, or hope, or wish is better. But, of course, we did not stop the unraveling of the universe. The universe is not a thing that is, it is not a thing at all. It is the very action of its going. It is, in fact, its own dissolves and our lives – the entire span of human existence going back and back and, if we are lucky, forward and forward – the entire span is spent within this dissolve.

So look at the fleeting stars with fleeting eyes, and feel how the earth beneath you gives. It is all a temporary manifestation of particles, and it is all unraveling back to particulate silence. The bustle of the human day will come and will go. And then there will be night.

But how beautiful these moments within the dissolve! What a temporary perfection we can find within this passing world! Everything good ever done! Everything good that was done today, and all the good people doing it, and back and back and forward and forward, all of that beauty within a universe unraveling.

Be proud of your place in the cosmos. It is small, and yet it is. How unlikely! How fantastic! And stupid. And excellent

Your music, your lyrics, the leaden prose of your life that proves that everything you are and are not, the structures you build to make futility seem like meaning, the dead and living – who will soon be dead, who will soon be gone, who will soon be smoke – rising in columns and forming clouds in the night sky. For now and ever, by the will of dead and dying gods.

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

Reports also indicate that the Night Vale Private Library will be entirely free of librarians, a fact that will be of little comfort to the many public library-goers who are injured or killed in librarian maulings every year.

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.

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.

We live in a pattern that we'll never detect, and that will shuffle us through invisible hierarchies to the actual death of us.

But, as you watch the sun rise again tomorrow morning, think to yourself: past performance is not a predictor of future results. And then force a smile, drink another cup of coffee, and try not to look down as you walk across the soil that will eventually fill your lifeless lungs and repurpose your corpse.

If you have homes, I suggest you flee them. If you have friends, I suggest you warn them. If you have children, did you not know how dangerous and unpredictable the world was when you created a defenseless tiny human within it? And

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

And night falls on you too. You have survived, survived everything up to this moment. Grip tight, hum, laugh, cry. Forget nothing and think many things of it.
Goodnight. Goodnight. Goodnight.

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.

The other option was to go to the public library. Few people came back from a visit to the library. There was one girl a few years ago the survived the summer reading program at the Night Vale Public Library. The girl, Tamika Flynn, defeated the librarian that had imprisoned her and her classmates using the switchblade hidden in every hardback edition of Eudora Welty's touching homecoming novel, The Optimist's Daughter. But few who have seen a librarian up close have survived or been in a physical condition to communicate.

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.

There was a black sedan with tinted windows at the end of the lot--the windows cracked down enough for her to see two sunglassed agents of a vague yet menacing government agency watching her intently. One of them had a camera that kept going off, but the agent didn't seem to know how to deactivate the flash. The light against the tinted windows made the shots worthless, and the agent cursed and tried again and it flashed again. Jackie waved good night to them, as she always did.

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.

You're a good one, Jackie Fierro," they said. "And that makes the world a dangerous place for you.

One day we will destroy the moon with indifference!

Pepsi: Drink Coke.

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.

She was angry, which is the more productive cousin of fear.

Diane's parents are also two different races. It matters which races, but it matters only to Diane and her parents and their family and friends, not to those who do not know them. Not everyone gets to know everything about everybody.

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.

Don't worry. Don't worry. All is as it was meant to be. It was meant to be lonely and terrifying and unfair and fleeting. Don't worry.

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

If we cannot be judged on our actions, then we cannot be judged.

It's a sign of a good diner to have customers who are stuck in time. A well-known rule of eating is that if there are no time-loop customers, the place probably isn't worth even ordering a plate of fries.

The vague yet menacing government agency would like to remind you that UFOs are totally not a thing. They remind you that UFOs are merely weather balloons, and further, that weather balloons are merely misplaced clouds, that clouds are merely dreams that have escaped our sleep, that sleep is merely a practice for death, that death is merely another facet of our world, no different from, say, sand or bicycles, and that the great glowing earth is merely the last thoughts of a dying man, laughing and shaking his head weakly at the improbability of it all. Remember, it's not just the law. It's an

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.

I think like Joss Whedon [Stephen Moffat] often mistakes 'empowered' for 'strong in exactly the way I personally want to sleep with

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

She looked old, felt young, was neither.

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

She continued to look out the window for a moment, her humanity and thoughtfulness tucked away inside a tight frown, an honest brushstroke in a boring painting.

Aren't we all, metaphorically, just looking for a bathroom?

COMPUTER: HELLO, CECIL. HOW ARE YOU?
CECIL: Computer! I am...I am doing well. How are you?
COMPUTER: BETTER. CECIL, DO YOU LOVE COMPUTER?
CECIL: I admit, I had not given it much though. I like computers generally. They calculate and power off and on. I suppose, given time and perhaps some gifts, I could learn to... [shifting noises] hey!

We all want to live forever, right? Wrong! Think about watching your family die as you selfishly carry on. Your children aging and passing, your grandchildren, and so on. Think of all of the friends you'll make but eventually lose. You don't want that! No! You know the earth is eventually going to be swallowed by the sun, right? And one day you would be present for this greatest of all apocalypses. As fascinating as this event would be, scientifically speaking, this excitement would fade as the pain of thousand-degree flames engulfed your tender body and your aged mind would be so alone in this interminable torture. Does this sound like something you want? We didn't think so.
Immortality is stupid. Think before you wish.
This message brought to you by DIRECTV.

She understood the world and her place in it. She understood nothing. The world and her place in it were nothing and she understood that.

I'm...um...I've got guests in my studio. I don't know how they undid my secure barricade made of cardboard signs that said KEEP OUT! and SECRET ROOM! in all caps with an exclamation point, but it's my program director, Lauren, and some man I've never seen bef - but no, I have seen him before.

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.

Hey, listen, I think the Arby's is hiring. Have you considered that? Their death rate is really low for the area." But

As a last resort, with the orange nearing my face and my back pressing hard against the sharp edge of my broadcast table, I grabbed my phone to tell Carlos that if I didn't make it home tonight, it wasn't because I didn't love him, or didn't want to watch a documentary on special scientific graphs, or was too obsessed with my job to relax and enjoy a good meal and some television. It was only because I was zapped out of existence by a lunatic Non-John Peters. And that, in fact, I do love Carlos, and I would want nothing more than to watch a documentary on scientific graphs over some homemade linguini, or go out to eat again, or whatever.

But then, as I grabbed my phone, I thought: That's way too long to write for a text. So I just hit John Peters upside the head with it...

Josh looks like a lot of things. He changes his physical form constantly. In this way he is unlike most boys his age. He thinks he is several things at once, many of them contradictory. In this way he is like most boys his age.

You will know recycling has been picked up because your recycling bags will be gone and there will be a large, reddish brown smear across your front door roughly in the shape of an X. Or maybe it's a cross. It's not clear in the brochure I've been handed, which has no words, only dark black-and-white photographs of angled shadows along brick walls. I mean, municipal one-sheets are kind of useless, but this one is at least haunting.

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.

In other news, a man in a tan jacket, holding a deerskin suitcase, was seen. I don't remember anything about him or why this was news, but it had seemed important a the time. I wrote it down: 'Say the important thing about the man in the tan jacket.' What was it? What was I supposed to say?

Messages are for the sender, not for the receiver.

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

In terms of tacos, she was doing fine.

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...

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.

At your smallest components, you are indistinguishable from a forest fire.

That's it from me for now, listeners. But something in me says that this is no ending. The night outside is bright and breezy and full of dangerous secrets. There is a taste in the air like tarnished silver, like the flesh of an extinct animal now only remembered through our spinal cord and the hairs on our back.

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.

There always seems to be something upsetting you. You should relax more. It's not that there' s nothing coming to get you, there's everything coming to get you…but relax anyway, just on principle.

The only pawn shop in the town of Night Vale is run by the very young Jackie Fierro. It has no name, but if you need it, you will know where it is. This knowledge will come suddenly, often while you are in the shower. You will collapse, surrounded by a bright glowing blackness, and you will find yourself on your hands and knees, the warm water running over you, and you will know where the pawn shop is. You will smell must, and soap, and feel a stab of panic about how alone you are.

It will be like most showers you've taken.

You know, they always say, "If you're trying to meet someone, you may never find them. But it's when you're not looking, that's when they find you." I've always heard this in reference to government agents, but I think it applies to dating as well.

She didn't love the movie as a movie, but she appreciated it as a familiar comfort.

What are people but deaths that haven't happened yet?

This episode isn't about spiders. Nor owls. It's about looking at something and thinking you understand what it is. It's about assuming the best of what you see only to find out quite suddenly that it is the worst.

This kind of misunderstanding has always been, to me, the most compelling kind of horror. The StrexPet here is that issue of Zoobooks.

Another way it is unlike other houses is its thoughts. Most houses do not think. This house has thoughts. Those thoughts are not visible in a picture. Nor in person. But they find their way into the world. Through dreams mostly. While a person sleeps, the house might suddenly have a thought: Taupe is not an emotional catalyst. It's practical and bland. No one cries at any shade of taupe. Or another thought like OMG time! What is time even? And the sleeping person might experience that thought too.

had felt good to have someone explicitly value something that she did.

Hulu Plus: Good for criminals.

There was a Taco Bell where people could pee. There was a gas station where people could pee. There were all sorts of things. The mayor was proud of his town.

What?' Diane was enjoying listening to Cecil. She loved the end of his show, when he said, 'Good night, Night Vale, good night.' No matter how difficult her life was or how troublesome the news he was reporting, his voice and his sign-off put her at such ease.

Dammit!" she said, stabbing the paper with her butter knife and then repeated "Dammit" a couple of more times in a hopeless decrescendo.
"KING CITY," said the paper.
"Yeah, yeah, so I've heard," she muttered. No one around her noticed. Teenagers shout things a lot while smashing knives near their hands, everyone knew.

Some days the weather happens and we never look up or go outside and that's okay too.

How do you say everything you've wanted to say to a person who has been a big part of your life and doesn't know you at all? "Diane,

Comfort was the answer to all life's problems. It didn't solve them, but it made them more distant for a bit as they quietly worsened.

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.

Nowhere, the tarantula felt nothing at all.

You are leaving this story now. You were only an example, and it is probably safer for you not to b erin this story anyway.

Last night, at a press conference, the City Council reminded everyone that the Dog Park is there for our community enjoyment and use, and so it is important that no one enter, look at, or think about the Dog Park. They are adding a new advanced camera system to keep an eye on the great black walls of the Dog Park at all times, and if anyone is caught trying to enter it, they will be forced to enter it, and will never be heard from again. If you see hooded figures in the Dog Park, no you didn't. The hooded figures are perfectly safe, and should not be approached at any costs. 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.
We have also received word via encrypted radio pulses about the opening of a new store: Lenny's Bargain House of Gardenwares and Machine Parts, which until recently was that abandoned warehouse the government was using for the highly classified and completely secret tests I was telling you about last week. Lenny's will serve as a helpful new source for all needs involving landscaping and lawn-decorating materials and also as a way for the government to unload all the machines and failed tests and dangerous substances that otherwise would be wasted on things like "safe disposal" or "burying in a concrete tomb until the sun goes out."
Get out to Lenny's for their big grand opening sale. Find eig

Imagine teaching a fifteen-year-old how to drive a car with manual transmission. First, you have to press down the clutch. Then you have to whisper a secret into one of the cup holders.

Valentine's Day is a disaster. Any day that is designed to perfectly encapsulate something as messy and personal as two people in a romantic relationship would have to be. But in Night Vale it also kills people. This is called satire.

KEVIN: And now a word from our sponsors. Lauren?
LAUREN: Thank, Kev. Can I call you Kev?
KEVIN: Haha. No Lauren, by no means.

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.

And yes, you will die, but probably not until everyone you know is already dead too. Your parents, your friends, your pets, each death leaving a small but irreparable scar on your not yet still, still-beating heart. The living tell the dying not to leave and the dying do not listen. The dying tell us not to be sad for them and we do not listen. The dialogue between the living and the dead is full of misunderstanding and

She stuck to side streets, riding slowly, with care. The trip took a little under an hour, and Diane was feeling a pulsing pain in her calf by the time sh pulled up to the front of the pawnshop. There was a black sedan with tinted windows at the end of the lot--the windows cracked down enough for her to see two sunglassed agents of a vague yet menacing government agency. One of them raised her camera and tried to take a photo of Diane, but the camera flashed, only reflecting the car window back at the lens. The agent swore. Diane waved a cursory hello at them and walked into the store.

To be remembered is, I think, a badic human right. Not one that occurs to a person when it is there, but like a parched throat in a desert when it is gone.

A life does not have to be satisfying or triumphant. A life does not have to mean anything or lead anywhere. A life does not need a direction or a goal. But sometimes a person is lucky enough to have a life with all that anyway.

We have big dreams - sometimes scary, unforgettable dreams that repeat on the same date every year and are shared by every person in town - but we make those big dreams come true. Remember the clock tower? It took eight years and $23 million to build, and despite its invisibility and constant teleportation, it is a lovely structure that keeps impeccable time.

It was a simpler time. Because I personally had less memories and so less to superimpose upon the world, and so it was much clearer, and also I was younger. Thus, the world was simpler.

She felt old, looked young, was neither.

Looking for a snack? Try wheat or a wheat by-product. Dinner? Wheat &/or its by-product. Trying to patch a leaky roof? We have just the thing for you, and we also have its by-product.

Wednesday has been canceled due to a scheduling error.

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.

The text also just grows increasingly garbled. For instance, here it says that our new subway system will streamline the rush-hour commute, but about halfway down, it's a series of nearly indecipherable glyphs our experts insist hint at "non-Euclidian emotions" and "appeasement" (though we think this may be a euphemism for "fares").

The only way to be brave is to first be afraid.

PROVERB: Eating meat is a difficult moral decision, because it's stolen, that meat. You should apologize.

Desperation does not breed empathy or clear thinking.

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

The search for truth takes us to dangerous places," said Old Woman Josie. "Often it takes us to that most dangerous place: the library. You know who said that? No? George Washington did. Minutes before librarians ate him.

Look, life is stressful. This is true everywhere. But life in Night Vale is more stressful. There are things lurking in the shadows. Not the projections of a worried mind, but literal Things, lurking, literally, in shadows. Conspiracies are hidden in every storefront, under every street, and floating in helicopters above. And with all that there is still the bland tragedy of life. Births, deaths, comings, goings, the gulf of subjectivity and bravado between us and everyone we care about. All is sorrow, as a man once said without really doing much about it.

... but what are people but deaths that haven't happened yet?"
"Births that already happened?" Jacky said without thinking.
The mayor laughed. She looked different when she laughed, and then she stopped laughing and she did not look different anymore.

see, now, that it was wrong for me to curse your particular blood to a diseased eternity of suffering. In an attempt at magnanimity I extend an apology and retract my sanguinary execration.