-
I like America, where believers eddy around each other like currents of air. Even our atheists are devout! To be an American is to be a believer. I don't have much faith in institutions, but I still believe in people.
Victor LaValle -
Try imagining James Joyce not writing about being a Catholic.
Victor LaValle
-
I know that many authors say editors don't edit anymore, but that's not been true in my experience.
Victor LaValle -
What's beautiful about Godzilla is, of course, it's in every way a symbol of Japan dealing with the aftermath of the atomic bombs being dropped on them, and their ideas of how they're affected by it.
Victor LaValle -
'Dark Gods,' T. E. D. Klein's book of four novellas, felt like a godsend - even if it came from a deformed god, one that lurked beneath our sidewalks.
Victor LaValle -
Lonely women destroy themselves; lonely men threaten the world.
Victor LaValle -
I realise I might pass down an incurable illness to my son, but living based on what might go wrong seems like less and less of a life as I get older. The one thing I can try to control is whether I teach my child to be ruled by anxiety, by fear. That's something that gets passed down, too.
Victor LaValle -
Shirley Jackson enjoyed notoriety and commercial success within her lifetime, and yet it still hardly seems like enough for a writer so singular. When I meet readers and other writers of my generation, I find that mentioning her is like uttering a holy name.
Victor LaValle
-
In the past, a writer had to go outside and get to know others before learning about their work, but the Internet has made humanity more accessible for misanthropes like me. I read blogs, tweets, Facebook posts and Reddit threads where people detail their jobs.
Victor LaValle -
Every era needs a genre through which it understands itself.
Victor LaValle -
I didn't grow up in a small New England town like the one in 'The Sundial.' I was raised in an apartment building in Queens, not in a sprawling, slightly sinister mansion like the one where the Halloran family resides.
Victor LaValle -
If you want to learn the true nature of a child you have to watch how she plays. If you want to learn the true nature of an adult you have to watch how she does her job.
Victor LaValle -
In the end, what's any good reader really hoping for? That spark. That spell. That journey.
Victor LaValle -
Since Queens is the most ethnically diverse plot of land on Earth, we had tenants from all over the globe. The whole world in one building.
Victor LaValle
-
Social media give me the privilege of learning about more people than I could meet in my whole life. Taken together, the Internet reads like the grandest character-driven novel humanity has ever known. Not much plot, though.
Victor LaValle -
The profession is never going back to those days when a handful of wealthy people treated publishing like a hobby: one where the business can lose money because the family has lots of it to burn. Frankly, I don't think that model was ever sustainable, and it really only enriched a small number of writers.
Victor LaValle