Andrew Vachss Quotations

I don't understand people whose gratification is a BMW. You don't know what joy is until you see a kid who was tortured get adopted by a family.

Building a mechanical device for its appearance is like putting lace on a bowling ball.

Fighting means you could lose. Bullying means you can't. A bully wants to beat somebody; he doesn't want to fight somebody.

All children are born pure egoists. They perceive their needs to the exclusion of all others. Only through socialization do they learn that some forms of gratification must be deferred and others denied.

We don't protect our young, and we tolerate predators of our own species.

I hate bullies. I hate them. I'm not good enough with words to describe how much I hate them.

Crime takes the pulse of a culture. It tells us the truth about us as a species.

Ask any experienced defense lawyer: the real risks are for an accused person who is innocent. A guilty defendant has many more options available.

In some neighborhoods, if you want to walk down the streets, you've got two choices - look down, or look hard.

A kid in an abusive home has far fewer rights than any POW. There is no Geneva Convention for kids.

I'm in pursuit of what cannot be achieved: perfection.

There is no Constitutional right to prey on others. The Internet is just a piece of technology, like the telephone. Society has the right to modify its uses.

Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That's why my hero, admittedly a flawed one, is a journalist.

The idea that you're not a writer until you're published is a lie.

People are pushing against the fabric of society all the time.

I think people should be consumers of journalism.

Journalism is what maintains democracy. It's the force for progressive social change.

The third person narrator, instead of being omniscient, is like a constantly running surveillance tape.

Victimizers of children are the enemies of any so-called society.

Without question, I've either got to be a writer, or I fail.

The sweetest thing I could say about my mother and father is that if I had the choice, I would have picked them. But I don't have any belief in biology or DNA as compelling conduct. The idea that we owe people something because we're related to them is bizarre. But the idea that we owe something because of their conduct towards us is legitimate.

I believe my publisher has shown a great deal of faith in me over a lot of years but I'm not prepared to be so arrogant to say that the long-term literary value of my work would compensate them for a financial failure.

I did criminal defense work part-time, and that paid the bills for representing abused and neglected children... and for defending in juvenile court those kids the 'child protective system' had missed when it had the chance.

A trial is not a search for truth. It is a contest and, often, one that produces no winners.

I didn't start out angry. I started out a young man wanting adventure.

If I ever stopped being angry, I couldn't write anymore. How could I?

I write everything in Courier 12 because I write for publication, not pleasure.

No politician is threatened by the child protective constituency, because it does not exist.

Ours is a country where anything can be accomplished if enough people get angry... because, in America, we act on our collective anger.

While early childhood experiences may impel, they do not compel. In the end, evil is a matter of choice.

I don't even use italics or boldface; that's clutter, not clarity. Fancy fonts are fine for blogs, just as calligraphy is fine for diaries. But when you're writing for anyone other than yourself, you want to get as universal as possible.

Anyone who says, 'Books don't change anything,' or - more commonly - that crime fiction is the wrong genre for promoting social change - should take a closer look.

A moral society will not set standards for becoming a parent, but it will establish irreducible minimums for maintaining that sacred status.

From the very second that two people sat together around a fire in the forest, there was another human out there who felt better in the dark.

Evil is a matter of choice. Those people who have been victimized and refuse to imitate their oppressors are in my mind the greatest heroes we have.

It isn’t much use writing slogans on a wall if you plan to total the building.

Fear is an enemy that can be killed only at close range. The closest range of all is intimacy. The deeper the fear is embedded in one’s spirit, the more vulnerable it is.

Two rules: You enter without breaking. And you remember that nobody misses what you don't take.

Be he the first to stand or the last, a man must stand," the father had told his adoring son. "And if there is only one man, then that man must stand alone." ~Thomas to Bruce Wayne

When you hunt predators, the best camouflage is weakness.

Most investigators don't even know what the word means. You stop the cops from using informants and the only crimes they'd ever solve would be those by deranged postal workers who come to work once too often.

People who don't have much get ugly about giving up the little they have left.

A free press doesn't mean it's not a tame press.

The worst place to be is in the middle. When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.

The Humane Society of America thinks Michael Vick should have a dog. I think whoever's in charge there should have a lobotomy.

I want to disabuse people of the idea that knowledge is power. Knowing how to get to Detroit is not the same thing as having the bus fare.

Roots are nice, but a tree can’t run.

I don't take advances for my books.

Max Allan Collins blends fact and fiction like no other writer.

Stealing to eat ain’t criminal—stealing to be rich is.

If a train is coming at you, closing your eyes won't save you ... but if you look right at it, you at least have a chance to jump.

Camouflage doesn't help when the other guy is willing to defoliate the whole jungle.

The more bullets flying, the less accurate each individual slug has to be.

Cats are the lap-dancers of the animal world. Soon as you stop shelling out, they move on, find another lap. They're furry little sociopaths. Pretty and slick -- in love with themselves. When's the last time you saw a seeing-eye cat?

Information is the hardest currency.

He said when the Lord made people He made them all the same for starters. But life marks people. If you know the way, you can read them like maps.

It's the family you choose that counts.

The Bowery station on the J line is what happens to a neighborhood once politicians realize the people who live there don't vote.

I don't sign contracts for my books.

Life is a fight, but not everyone’s a fighter. Otherwise, bullies would be an endangered species.

Chronic sexual predators [to Vachss, pedophiles] have crossed an osmotic membrane. They can’t step back to the other side - our side. And they don't want to. If we don't kill them or release them, we have but one choice. Call them monsters and isolate them.... I’ve spoken to many predators over the years. They always exhibit amazement that we do not hunt them. And that when we capture them, we eventually let them go. Our attitude is a deliberate interference with Darwinism - an endangerment of our species.

If love would die along with death, this life wouldn't be so hard.

Even if sheep could talk, they'd never ask questions.

A dog is like a person—he needs a job and a family to be what he’s meant to be.

Children know the truth: love is not an emotion, love is behavior.

Family' is not just a biological word, it's an an operative one.

Courier 12 is the Type-O blood of fonts - works just as good for a 'N.Y. Times' op-ed as a screenplay or a short story.

The idea that you are a writer because you're published is also a lie.