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

Journalism is the protection between people and any sort of totalitarian rule. That's why my hero, admittedly a flawed one, is a journalist.

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

It's the family you choose that counts.

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.

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.

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.