Andrew Vachss Quotes

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

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

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

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

~ Andrew Vachss

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

~ Andrew Vachss

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

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

~ Andrew Vachss

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

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

~ Andrew Vachss

You want proof evolution is for real, don’t waste your time with fossils; just check out the New York City rat. They started out as immigrants, stowaways in some ship’s cargo hold. Only the survivors got to breed, and they’ve been improving with every new litter. Smarter, faster, stronger. Getting ready to rule. Manhattan wouldn’t be the first island they took over.

~ Andrew Vachss

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

~ Andrew Vachss

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

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

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

~ Andrew Vachss

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

~ Andrew Vachss

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Andrew Vachss