Top 90 Victor LaValle Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There were others who would have called him a scammer, a swindler, a con, but he never thought of himself this way. No good charlatan ever did.”

— Victor LaValle

2. “You leave a trail of breadcrumbs any wolf could follow, then act shocked when the wolf is outside your door.”

— Victor LaValle

3. “Posting online is like leaving your front door open and telling any creature of the night it can enter.”

— Victor LaValle

4. “Empathy is what separates human beings from teenage boys.”

— Victor LaValle

5. “You had to be rich to risk looking broke. The.”

— Victor LaValle

6. “Even if you choose to ignore the truth, the truth still changes you.”

— Victor LaValle

7. “I’m always looking for the monster. Not even just in horror. I want them in everything. Just give me the monsters. Logical conclusions don’t satisfy. Monsters satisfy, absolutely.”

— Victor LaValle

8. “What was indifference compared to malice? “Indifference would be such a relief,” Tommy said.”

— Victor LaValle

9. “Nobody ever thinks of himself as a villain, does he? Even monsters hold high opinions of themselves.”

— Victor LaValle

10. “I’ll take Cthulhu over you devils any day.”

— Victor LaValle

11. “Mankind didn’t make messes; mankind was the mess.”

— Victor LaValle

12. “The Sleeping King is dead but dreaming.”

— Victor LaValle

13. “There are stories about perfection, but those stories are lies. No one ever made the world better by being perfect. There is only mess in humans, and sometimes that mess turns to magic, and sometimes that magic turns to kindness, to salvation, to survival.”

— Victor LaValle

14. “The veil of ignorance has been set over your face since birth. Shall I pull it free?”

— Victor LaValle

15. “This is how you hustle the arcane. Skirt the rules but don’t break them.”

— Victor LaValle

16. “Guns and badges don’t scare everyone,” Black Tom said.”

— Victor LaValle

17. “Lonely women destroy themselves; lonely men threaten the world.”

— Victor LaValle

18. “People who move to New York always the same mistake. They can’t see the place.”

— Victor LaValle

19. “You can’t choose blindness when it suits you. Not anymore.”

— Victor LaValle

20. “Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men.”

— Victor LaValle

21. “I bear a hell within me,” Black Tom growled. “And finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.”

— Victor LaValle

22. “History isn’t a tale told once, it’s a series of revisions.”

— Victor LaValle

23. “What was indifference compared to malice?”

— Victor LaValle

24. “Women only like jerks.’ That’s the mantra of dudes who have made themselves undateable but aren’t willing to take the blame.”

— Victor LaValle

25. “A good hustler isn’t curious. A good hustler only wants his pay.”

— Victor LaValle

26. “The Sleeping King. At some point Suydam called this being by another name, his true name, but Tommy Tester could never recall it. Or perhaps his mind chose to forget.”

— Victor LaValle

27. “Writing to corroborate what you already think is the essence of bad writing.”

— Victor LaValle

28. “Give people what they expect and you can take from them all that you need.”

— Victor LaValle

29. “When you have to save the one you love, you will become someone else, something else. You will transform. The only real magic is the things we’ll done for the ones we love.”

— Victor LaValle

30. “There are really only two ways to react to the extraordinary. The first is to ponder the grand purpose until all the fun is sucked away, the second is to enjoy it.”

— Victor LaValle

31. “This was the first time in his life he ever played well. “Don’t you mind people grinning in your face,” Tommy sang. “Don’t mind people grinning in your face.” Few on the platform gave him their attention, another guitar man in Harlem being as unremarkable as the arc lights along the sidewalks. “I said bear this in mind, a true friend is hard to find. Don’t you mind people grinning in your face.”

— Victor LaValle

32. “Even monsters hold high opinions of themselves.”

— Victor LaValle

33. “In folktales a vampire couldn’t enter your home unless you invited him in. Without your consent the beast could never cross your threshold. Well, what do you think your computer is? Your phone? You live inside those devices so those devices are your homes. But at least a home, a physical building, has a door you can shut, windows you can latch. Technology has no locked doors.”

— Victor LaValle

34. “Unsupervised reading is a blessing for a certain kind of child.”

— Victor LaValle

35. “Walking through Harlem first thing in the morning was like being a single drop of blood inside an enormous body that was waking up. Brick and mortar, elevated train tracks, and miles of underground pipe, this city lived; day and night it thrived.”

— Victor LaValle

36. “I have my teachers who tell me what to do. I’m not quite old enough yet to be truly independent.”

— Victor LaValle

37. “If our relationships are made of many small lies, they become something larger, a prison of falsehoods.”

— Victor LaValle

38. “There is a King who sleeps at the bottom of the ocean.”

— Victor LaValle

39. “No one wants to learn their history,” Jorgen said firmly. “Not all of it. We want our parents to provide but don’t want to know what they had to sacrifice to do it. No nation was ever built with kindness.”

— Victor LaValle

40. “William Kowalski is the kind of storyteller you don’t see quite enough these days. The yarn spinner with a generous soul. The Hundred Hearts is a moving, humane adventure about the price of personal connections and the costs of sacrifice. I tore through this bad boy in two short nights.”

— Victor LaValle

41. “But a wealthy man’s reality is remade at will.”

— Victor LaValle

42. “Every human being is a series of stories; it’s nice when someone wants to hear a new one.”

— Victor LaValle

43. “The shame wasn’t in discovering that she had a price; everyone had one of those. Maybe it was just in learning, so concretely, that this was what she cost.”

— Victor LaValle

44. “Whatever fuckery was about to unfold, she would meet it with swagger.”

— Victor LaValle

45. “A little style is a good thing, but you can’t trust a person who won’t be ugly in front of you.”

— Victor LaValle

46. “Stupid people had a few authors in common: Sidney Sheldon, Judith Krantz, Danielle Steel. What nonsense. Such dreck.”

— Victor LaValle

47. “A thought, an idea, a shared dream; parenthood is a story two people start telling together.”

— Victor LaValle

48. “Nearly everyone could be undone by an old woman’s displeasure.”

— Victor LaValle

49. “Destroy if all, then hand what was left over to Robert Suydam and these gathered goons? What would they do differently? Mankind didn’t make messes; mankind was the mess.”

— Victor LaValle

50. “All those tales were told right here, one after the next, each informing the one that came after. History isn’t a tale told once, it’s a series of revisions.”

— Victor LaValle