Andrew Vachss Quotes
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The worst place to be is in the middle. When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.
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A moral society will not set standards for becoming a parent, but it will establish irreducible minimums for maintaining that sacred status.
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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.
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Camouflage doesn't help when the other guy is willing to defoliate the whole jungle.
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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.
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I'm in pursuit of what cannot be achieved: perfection.
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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
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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.
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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?
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The more bullets flying, the less accurate each individual slug has to be.
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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.
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People are pushing against the fabric of society all the time.
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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.
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It isn’t much use writing slogans on a wall if you plan to total the building.
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A free press doesn't mean it's not a tame press.
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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.
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The Bowery station on the J line is what happens to a neighborhood once politicians realize the people who live there don't vote.
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A kid in an abusive home has far fewer rights than any POW. There is no Geneva Convention for kids.
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Two rules: You enter without breaking. And you remember that nobody misses what you don't take.
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Victimizers of children are the enemies of any so-called society.
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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.
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I don't take advances for my books.
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A dog is like a person—he needs a job and a family to be what he’s meant to be.
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Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That's why my hero, admittedly a flawed one, is a journalist.