Finders Keepers Quotes
"The dream was too good. It featured his first wife months before she became his first wife, seventeen and perfect from head to toe."
"She believed in the dreams even more than he did, and she was right to believe."
"Rothstein knew he was in trouble here. Two words surfaced in his mind: home invasion."
"He tried to think of Peggy, with her teacup-sized breasts and her long, smooth legs, but the dream was as gone as Peggy herself."
"This was what had become of the writer who, in the year JFK became president, had been on the cover of Time magazine: JOHN ROTHSTEIN, AMERICA’S RECLUSIVE GENIUS."
"You’re all set, right? Why take a chance on publishing something that might put a dent in your solid gold reputation?"
"If you think that," John Rothstein said, "you never understood a word I wrote."
"A bullet in the head would not be so bad, maybe. Better than cancer or Alzheimer’s, that prime horror of anyone who has spent his life making a living by his wits."
"You’re stupid," Rothstein said. All at once he was in a kind of ecstasy. "You think you’re smarter than those other two, but you’re not."
"Sometimes when he couldn’t sleep, lying on his back in his cell, Morris would soothe himself by remembering his discovery of Jimmy Gold."
"For readers, one of life’s most electrifying discoveries is that they are readers—not just capable of doing it, but in love with it."
"In my game, there’s a term for your response. It’s called blame avoidance."
"Morris stalked to the sidewalk with his head down, and when he reached it, he began to run."
"Morris kept hoping that Jimmy would wake up. That he would remember who he was."
"Morris wrote a ten-page book report on The Runner. It came back from Miss Todd with an A+."
"Morris wrote several times to Andy Halliday, who now did have his own shop."
"Morris was by then working in the library, which was a wonderful change for the better."
"Morris’s work as a writer was much in demand—he was, in the small world of Waynesville, a bestselling author."
"I am in receipt of your wonderful novel, Wise Blood, which you have so kindly inscribed to me."
"You have been called a 'connoisseur of grotesqueries,' yet what the critics miss is your lunatic sense of humor, which takes no prisoners."
"I know you are physically unwell, but I hope you will persevere in your work in spite of that. It is important work!"
"You could say in Mexico. Or Guatemala, if you like."
"In any case it’s blanco up to the blue sky except for the ragged mops of palms and rosa where the boy outside the café is washing cobbles, half asleep."
"To see Jimmy Gold as some sort of benchmark, a HERO, even, is like calling someone like Billy the Kid an American icon."
"I think he might have written it while he was drunk. He drank a lot, you know, then quit. Cold turkey."
"The money stopped coming last September, along with a note that said he’s sorry there isn’t more."
"You may be substance-free, but I really don’t like the way you look, Morrie."
"What are they doing, anyway, letting a guy like me screw with their files? A parolee?"
"I can do this," he says, first adjusting the seat and then gripping the wheel. "I can do this."
"A man with a map looks okay, somehow, but a man reading a book in an old truck would probably look like a potential child molester."
"The long light of this June evening mellows to dusk."
"Fuck you, Mr. McFarland, he thinks. Fuck you very much."
"He promised to return the truck by ten, but it’s after midnight when he parks it."
"I don’t have to wipe everyone out, just my enemies."
"As long as he’s in motion, the doubts and fears don’t have a chance to creep in."
"No more baa-ing yes sir and no sir and three bags full sir each time McFarland shows up."
"Morris thinks maybe he’ll opt for New England."
"Morris leaves the courtyard as briskly as he came, pauses for a comforting look at the CLOSED sign."
"As if he knows where he is, where he’s going, and has every right to be here."
"Morris Bellamy’s big day. His life has taken a long, long detour, but he’s almost back on the mainline."
"Once in the hall she breaks into a run, heading for the bathroom halfway down the hall as fast as she can, but the lump is faster."
"The possibility that this hulk of a building has alarm protection is looking slimmer all the time."
"No one who didn’t go through those terrible months after Tommy’s accident could get that, and I’m not going to apologize for it."
"If we stand out here much longer, I’m going to melt."
"He doesn’t seem nervous about being in a strange man’s car."
"Most of the kids are with friends. The Saubers boy is alone."
"The world pulls away from her, becomes something she’s looking at through a smudged window."
"I should have known Rothstein couldn’t leave Jimmy working for that fucking ad agency, because there was no roundness in that."
"Morris thinks, if he doesn’t show up here, I’ll just have to pay a house call."
"Not since the days of his toddler tantrums has he told his mother to shut up."
"The bus continues lumbering its laborious way through the construction."
"I’m taking her to a safe place. A place where we can meet, once you have the notebooks."
"Crazy don’t mean shit," Morris Bellamy says. "Crazy don’t mean shit. Nothing means shit."
"You better believe it," Pete says. "It’s a forty-five, lots bigger than yours."
"They were here all along, and he thinks that’s funny?"
"You’re right," Pete says. "No gun. But I did find this in his desk."
"He’s got my sister. He says if he doesn’t get the notebooks, he’ll kill her."
"Please God, if you’re there… let that be true."