The Fact Checker Quotes

“This seemed like a terrible mistake on my part, to be a human so alienated from his own food, to be a meat eater who’d never killed anything. Although that would soon change.”
― Austin Kelley, The Fact Checker: A Novel

“I looked at McDonough. He didn’t react. He was a tall, ropy guy, prematurely balding. He looked like a rock climber or a cyclist.”
― Austin Kelley, The Fact Checker: A Novel

“St. Dymphna’s was a dark Irish pub with roughly hewn wooden tables. I imagined it might be a place for Dungeons & Dragons fans or those people who like to pretend-swordfight in Union Square to come and plot their medieval quest over a flagon of ale and a shepherd’s pie.”
― Austin Kelley, The Fact Checker: A Novel

“Skipped town? I thought. Who uses that expression? Don’t you have to have bookies after you, or the law or at least a mad and jealous lover, in order to “skip town”? I certainly wasn’t a jealous lover. Or I didn’t think I was. “I heard she went to Mexico,” Nick said. “I don’t know. I was a little worried about her, but you know Sylvia.” I nodded blankly. I didn’t know Sylvia. Not really.”
― Austin Kelley, The Fact Checker: A Novel

“I ended up talking with a young blonde woman who just started working at the Council on the Environment of New York City. She was on her gap year, she said. I imagined a gap year as a huge break in the space-time continuum. I tried to explain this to her, but it didn’t take.”
― Austin Kelley, The Fact Checker: A Novel

“I was thinking about Sylvia and the things she said about worshiping the Deity, and about the way her body felt, and about the dead canary in Tony Curtis’s story, and about vision therapy and the Fat Albert Girl, and how anyone can live a good life, an honorable life, an organic life, a life that will make things better, both day to day and in general, for oneself and for others. In other words, I was thinking about the things we all think about all the time while we wait for a potential lover or a fact-checking source to call us when they said they would call “in a few days” and six days had passed, and they haven’t called.”
― Austin Kelley, The Fact Checker: A Novel

“There was this birdcage right by our table with a canary. I’m looking at it, and the canary just drops dead,” he said. “It was smoky in there. Maybe it suffocated, I don’t know. I looked over to Marilyn, but she hadn’t noticed the bird. And just like that, before I say a thing, a waiter comes by, reaches into his coat, pulls out some nylons, and snatches up the dead bird. Another waiter comes up right behind him and puts a new canary in the cage. It blew my mind. I think about that a lot, you know: Life is fragile,” Tony Curtis said, “and, bam, you can just be replaced.”
― Austin Kelley, The Fact Checker: A Novel

“Mr. Lancaster was now introducing the Encyclopedia of New Jersey, which I was hoping was the last new book. “As all of you know,” Mr. Lancaster said, “I do not approve of New Jersey as a worthwhile subject of inquiry, nor do I understand why anyone would choose to live in a place so close to, yet so far from, the pinnacle of civilization, New York City. Nevertheless, against my better judgment, I have added this book to our library so that you can now learn more about such important cultural advancements as”—he flipped through the book—“Monopoly”—Mr. Lancaster almost laughed—“the popular board game, which, it says here, was invented in 1904 by an actress named Elizabeth Magie Phillips in order to promote the ideas of the economist Henry George. This George fellow apparently felt that rent income was causing social inequity, and this board game was supposed to reveal the truth. Hence, Monopoly.” Mr. Lancaster closed the book. “This will be placed in our extensive New Jersey section.”
― Austin Kelley, The Fact Checker: A Novel

“Mandeville/Green.” We referred to all not-yet-published stories at the magazine by the author’s last name and a one-word description, or slug, as we called it.”
― Austin Kelley, The Fact Checker: A Novel

“I might have let these little things slide—who cares about the size of the rug or the punctuation on Shaq’s stomach?—but I knew from experience that some details, irrelevant in themselves, become more significant when they pile up. Think of it this way: Say your girlfriend doesn’t like your beige rug. Maybe she doesn’t even say that explicitly. Maybe she just calls it the brown rug when you’ve always thought it was beige. Maybe what she really means, you later realize, is that she doesn’t respect you anymore. Of course, the “brown rug” comment in itself doesn’t matter. We don’t, like Sherlock Holmes, look at the carpet and uncover the philanderer. One “telling detail” doesn’t tell us much, but a succession of dozens of details working in concert creates an impression, and impressions are sometimes as powerful as declarations of fact. She lost the earrings you gave her. She lied about her doctor’s appointment. She called your medium-size beige rug a “little brown carpet” or a “shitty little carpet.” Is it a surprise, then, that she’s sleeping with her dissertation advisor? Maybe I’m getting a bit too personal here, but what I’m trying to say is this: When I had the CIA widow measure her rug, I really did want to know if it was a “fifteen-foot brown Afghan carpet with images of Russian tanks and Kalashnikovs,” but I was also putting together a bigger picture so that I could make sure the impressions of the article pointed us in the direction of “reality” or “truth” or whatever you want to call it. Some sort of fairness at least. That’s what a checker does.”
― Austin Kelley, The Fact Checker: A Novel