Thomas Elkins Quotes

I have a black belt in sarcasm, and my wit is like lightning.

The guy you’ve been seeing, the one you were all so secret-squirrel about, was my dad?” Cooper nodded. “Yes.” “Oh, fucking hell,” Ryan squeaked. “The one you said sucked dick like a Dyson?

You know what a sense of place is?” Cooper nodded. “It’s when the place you’re in feels like home. Where you’re at peace.” I nodded. “That’s exactly right.” Cooper looked around. “This place?” I shook my head. “No.” His voice kind of squeaked. “Me?” I nodded and grinned. “You’re my sense of place, Cooper.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Do you have some tough-guy persona I haven’t seen yet?” “Absolutely,” he said brightly. “I have a black belt in sarcasm, and my wit is like lightning.

What’s PSA?” “Prostate test.” “Prostate?” Cooper asked, looking a little miffed. “I hope he bought you dinner first.

You’d better be thinking of me when you smile like that,” Cooper said, now standing beside me. I hadn’t heard him come into the kitchen. I bumped his hip with mine. “Of course I’m thinking about you.” “Then why aren’t you hard?” he asked, looking pointedly at my crotch. Before I could say anything, he said, “They have pills now, for old guys who can’t get hard.

Oh, shut up,” I grumbled. “I suck at cooking and you know it.” He got a glazed, dreamy look on his face and after a while, he said, “I’m sorry, you mentioned sucking and I got distracted. I didn’t hear a word after that.” I rolled my eyes and walked into the kitchen, but he called out, “Your cooking is fine, Tom. But your sucking skills are your true talent.

They told you that you were safe. They told you lies. You are weak and defeated. For the price of one helicopter, we have brought you to your knees.

It’s about time I spent time on what’s really important.” “Well, work, then dinner, then you can do what’s really important.” Then he added, “You know I’m what’s important, don’t you? I meant that you can do me.

She and Don were taken to a hangar where a pair of F-15 fighter jets were waiting: his and hers, as it turned out. “Why?” Don asked uneasily. “We’re taking you to the U.S.S. William Jefferson Clinton.” “An aircraft carrier?

I read a heap of books to prepare to write my own. Valuable works about art crime include The Rescue Artist by Edward Dolnick, Master Thieves by Stephen Kurkjian, The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser, Possession by Erin Thompson, Crimes of the Art World by Thomas D. Bazley, Stealing Rembrandts by Anthony M. Amore and Tom Mashberg, Crime and the Art Market by Riah Pryor, The Art Stealers by Milton Esterow, Rogues in the Gallery by Hugh McLeave, Art Crime by John E. Conklin, The Art Crisis by Bonnie Burnham, Museum of the Missing by Simon Houpt, The History of Loot and Stolen Art from Antiquity Until the Present Day by Ivan Lindsay, Vanished Smile by R. A. Scotti, Priceless by Robert K. Wittman with John Shiffman, and Hot Art by Joshua Knelman. Books on aesthetic theory that were most helpful to me include The Power of Images by David Freedberg, Art as Experience by John Dewey, The Aesthetic Brain by Anjan Chatterjee, Pictures & Tears by James Elkins, Experiencing Art by Arthur P. Shimamura, How Art Works by Ellen Winner, The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton, and Collecting: An Unruly Passion by Werner Muensterberger. Other fascinating art-related reads include So Much Longing in So Little Space by Karl Ove Knausgaard, What Is Art? by Leo Tolstoy, History of Beauty edited by Umberto Eco, On Ugliness also edited by Umberto Eco, A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar, Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong, Art by Clive Bell, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke, Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton, The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe, and Intentions by Oscar Wilde—which includes the essay “The Critic as Artist,” written in 1891, from which this book’s epigraph was lifted.

comedic American novelists. Stanley Elkin and Thomas Berger got me laughing out loud. So did Bruce Jay Friedman. John Cheever.

I’ll always be your big spoon.” He snorted. “Unless I’m being the big spoon. Then you’ll be my little spoon.” “Always.

Cooper fell back onto his back. “Jesus, Tom. Don’t ask me to marry you when I’m mad. Fuck.