Andrew Vachss Quotes

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

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

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's the family you choose that counts.

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

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.

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

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

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

When you hunt predators, the best camouflage is weakness.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Information is the hardest currency.

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

Roots are nice, but a tree can’t run.

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.

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.

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

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

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.