Quotes from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“What bothered me most was their lack of style. I learned early that class is universally admired. Almost any fault, sin or crime is considered more leniently if there's a touch of class involved.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“When you're up there hundreds of people will claim you as a friend. When you're down, you're lucky if one will buy you a cup of coffee.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“A man's alter ego is nothing more than his favorite image of himself.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“Former police chief of Houston once said of me: “Frank Abagnale could write a check on toilet paper, drawn on the Confederate States Treasury, sign it ‘U.R. Hooked’ and cash it at any bank in town, using a Hong Kong driver’s license for identification.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“Modesty is not one of my virtues. At the time, virtue was not one of my virtues.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“I stole every nickel and blew it on fine threads, luxurious lodgings, fantastic foxes, and other sensual goodies. I partied in every capital in Europe and basked on all the world's most famous beaches.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“A MAN’S ALTER EGO is nothing more than his favorite image of himself.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“It's not what a man has but what a man is that's important. This car is fine for me. It gets me around. I know who I am and what I am, and that's what counts, not what other people might think of me.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“The second is observation. Observation is a skill that can be developed, but I was born blessed (or cursed) with the ability to pick up on details and items the average man overlooks.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“in my four months of legal cramming I’d learned the law is full of technicalities. Technicalities are what screw up justice. Wilcox”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“Of course, as someone once observed, there is no right way to do something wrong,”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“A con artist’s only weapon is his brain.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“during the first two interrogative sessions. Either I refused to answer or I would reply”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“nothing more than his favorite image of himself. The mirror in my room in the Windsor Hotel in Paris reflected my favorite image of me—a darkly handsome young airline pilot, smooth-skinned, bull-shouldered and immaculately groomed. Modesty is not one of my virtues.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“nothing more than his favorite image of himself. The mirror in my room in the Windsor Hotel in Paris reflected my favorite image of me—a darkly handsome young airline pilot, smooth-skinned, bull-shouldered and immaculately groomed. Modesty is not one of my virtues. At the time, virtue was not one of my virtues.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“I learned early that class is universally admired. Almost any fault, sin or crime is considered more leniently if there’s a touch of class involved.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“Of course, as someone once observed, there is no right way to do something wrong”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“A man's alter ego is nothing more than his favorite image of himself.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“When you're up there hundreds of people will claim you as a friend. When you're down, you're lucky if one will buy you a cup of coffee.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, is the most respected, and probably the largest, commercial flight-training school in the nation, I was informed. It’s the Notre Dame of the air.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“THERE IS ENCHANTMENT in a uniform, especially one that marks the wearer as a person of rare skills, courage or achievement. A”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“The third factor is research, the big difference between the hard-nosed criminal and the super con man.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“She did things to me that would lure a hummingbird from a hibiscus and make a bulldog break his chain. I”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“When Henry Ford invented the Model-T, women shed their bloomers and put sex on the road.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“Dad just smiled wryly. “You’ll learn, Frank, that when you’re up there’re hundreds of people who’ll claim you as a friend. When you’re down, you’re lucky if one of them will buy you a cup of coffee. If I had it to do over again, I’d select my friends more carefully. I do have a couple of good friends. They’re not wealthy, but one of them got me my job in the post office.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“It’s not what a man has but what a man is that’s important.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“My one sensuous fault was women. I had a Cyprian lust for them.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“The fox who keeps to one den is the easiest caught by the terriers, and I felt I had nested too long in one place.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“It was an odd pastime for a con man, but I had no real sense of hypocrisy. For the first time in my life I was giving unselfishly of myself, with no thought of any return, and it made me feel good.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

“I felt a little like Custer must have felt when he chanced upon Sitting Bull’s Sioux.”
― Frank W. Abagnale, quote from Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake

About the author

Popular quotes

“America is a lonely crock of shit...”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from Visions of Cody

“Stubama i dolje. Ni zvuka odozdo. Znači kasno je. Dobro. Još jedan dan, a još smo živi. Možda čak i malo mudriji. Dovoljno mudri da bismo shvatili da mnoge stvari još ne znamo. Doduše, imamo nadu.”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from The Hand of Oberon

“That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”
― John Taylor Gatto, quote from Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Education

“The secret of my success is this: I never tell what I am going to do till I have done it.”62”
― quote from Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt

“Phil doesn't say yes, but he doesn't really say no. He's willing to ruin a person's life in order to keep her from being angry at him.”
― Nell Freudenberger, quote from The Dissident

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.