Top 82 Vachss Quotes
#1. Andrew Vachss, the best noir-ey writer in the history of the genre, called cats the lap dancers of the animal world. Give them attention, they're there. Stop, they're outta there.
MaryJanice Davidson
#2. No politician is threatened by the child protective constituency, because it does not exist.
Andrew Vachss
#3. People who don't have much get ugly about giving up the little they have left.
Andrew Vachss
#4. Crime takes the pulse of a culture. It tells us the truth about us as a species.
Andrew Vachss
#5. I think people should be consumers of journalism.
Andrew Vachss
#6. Victimizers of children are the enemies of any so-called society.
Andrew Vachss
#7. A kid in an abusive home has far fewer rights than any POW. There is no Geneva Convention for kids.
Andrew Vachss
#8. Two rules: You enter without breaking. And you remember that nobody misses what you don't take.
Andrew Vachss
#9. Pervasive abuse and neglect of children is a greater danger to our species than cocaine and Communism combined.
Andrew Vachss
#10. The third person narrator, instead of being omniscient, is like a constantly running surveillance tape.
Andrew Vachss
#11. People are pushing against the fabric of society all the time.
Andrew Vachss
#12. Even if sheep could talk, they'd never ask questions.
Andrew Vachss
#13. 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?
Andrew Vachss
#14. When you hunt predators, the best camouflage is weakness.
Andrew Vachss
#15. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#16. Lawyers for abused kids can challenge bad agency decisions because they can always bring a lawsuit. A volunteer cannot.#barahona
Andrew Vachss
#17. I have learned that a man who counts himself a shepherd is not worthy to be a member of a flock.
Andrew Vachss
#18. Building a mechanical device for its appearance is like putting lace on a bowling ball.
Andrew Vachss
#19. I write everything in Courier 12 because I write for publication, not pleasure.
Andrew Vachss
#20. That's Manhattan today - all the money goes up top, while the infrastructure wastes away from neglect. The famous skyline is a cheap trick now, a sleight-of-hand to draw your eye from the truth, as illusory as a bodybuilder with osteoporosis.
Andrew Vachss
#21. The idea that you're not a writer until you're published is a lie.
Andrew Vachss
#22. While early childhood experiences may impel, they do not compel. In the end, evil is a matter of choice.
Andrew Vachss
#23. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#24. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#25. Take some pleasure from telling him no. My guess was that she worked for the landlord, not
Andrew Vachss
#26. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#27. If love would die along with death, this life wouldn't be so hard.
Andrew Vachss
#28. The first thing any charlatan needs is nomenclature. A special language. Trappings. That's the true genesis of psychobabble terms such as 'disclosure' and 'in denial.' Every good con man needs plausibility ...
Andrew Vachss
#30. Stealing to eat ain't criminal - stealing to be rich is.
Andrew Vachss
#31. Ask any experienced defense lawyer: the real risks are for an accused person who is innocent. A guilty defendant has many more options available.
Andrew Vachss
#32. I didn't start out angry. I started out a young man wanting adventure.
Andrew Vachss
#33. The worst place to be is in the middle. When elephants fight, the grass
gets trampled.
Andrew Vachss
#34. Children know the truth: love is not an emotion, love is behavior.
Andrew Vachss
#35. I wanted to ask her what the fuck was wrong but I had a date with a pack of skittish whores.
Andrew Vachss
#36. A free press doesn't mean it's not a tame press.
Andrew Vachss
#38. Without question, I've either got to be a writer, or I fail.
Andrew Vachss
#39. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#40. [I] settled down with the Daily News and the Post, glad to be back with journalism where all murders are "brutal," all prosecutors are "tough," and all blondes are
"attractive." And any lawyer who cooperates with the reporter is
"high-powered.
Andrew Vachss
#41. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#42. If I ever stopped being angry, I couldn't write anymore. How could I?
Andrew Vachss
#43. Fighting means you could lose. Bullying means you can't. A bully wants to beat somebody; he doesn't want to fight somebody.
Andrew Vachss
#44. A dog is like a person - he needs a job and a family to be what he's meant to be.
Andrew Vachss
#46. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#47. It isn't much use writing slogans on a wall if you plan to total the building.
Andrew Vachss
#48. The more bullets flying, the less accurate each individual slug has to be.
Andrew Vachss
#49. Camouflage doesn't help when the other guy is willing to defoliate the whole jungle.
Andrew Vachss
#50. Family' is not just a biological word, it's an an operative one.
Andrew Vachss
#51. The Bowery station on the J line is what happens to a neighborhood once politicians realize the people who live there don't vote.
Andrew Vachss
#52. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#53. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#55. Max Allan Collins blends fact and fiction like no other writer.
Andrew Vachss
#56. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#57. Some people have a personality disorder where they just have to go against the herd, right or wrong. They're so committed to their own lone-wolf image that ... Well, put it this way: if the others suddenly came over to their side, they'd switch sides.
Andrew Vachss
#58. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#59. In some neighborhoods, if you want to walk down the streets, you've got two choices - look down, or look hard.
Andrew Vachss
#60. Ours is a country where anything can be accomplished if enough people get angry ... because, in America, we act on our collective anger.
Andrew Vachss
#61. We don't protect our young, and we tolerate predators of our own species.
Andrew Vachss
#62. A trial is not a search for truth. It is a contest and, often, one that produces no winners.
Andrew Vachss
#63. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#64. Journalism is what maintains democracy. It's the force for progressive social change.
Andrew Vachss
#65. 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
Andrew Vachss
#66. People won't let you live the way you want to, but if you're strong enough or quick enough, at least you don't have to live the way they want you to.
Andrew Vachss
#67. I'm in pursuit of what cannot be achieved: perfection.
Andrew Vachss
#68. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#69. A moral society will not set standards for becoming a parent, but it will establish irreducible minimums for maintaining that sacred status.
Andrew Vachss
#70. Life is a fight, but not everyone's a fighter. Otherwise, bullies would be an endangered species.
Andrew Vachss
#72. Perfection cannot be achieved by men," he told me. "Our highest calling is the pursuit of perfection. My haiku will be finished when I die, but it will never be perfect.
Andrew Vachss
#73. The Humane Society of America thinks Michael Vick should have a dog. I think whoever's in charge there should have a lobotomy.
Andrew Vachss
#74. The ferret, hunting,
eyes on the ground,
never hears footsteps
of the hawk
Andrew Vachss
#75. The goal of a true family is not that their children follow in their footsteps, but that their children surpass them in all ways.
Andrew Vachss
#76. A couple of buffoons were running for some state-senate seat just vacated by the incumbent's prison term. One accused the other of being "against the Internet" - a knockout punch in a world where whole hordes of humans think better sex is a faster modem.
Andrew Vachss
#77. Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That's why my hero, admittedly a flawed one, is a journalist.
Andrew Vachss
#79. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#80. 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.
Andrew Vachss
#82. I hate bullies. I hate them. I'm not good enough with words to describe how much I hate them.
Andrew Vachss
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