Top 90 Victor LaValle Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Time alone is pornography for people with families.”

— Victor LaValle

52. “Seeing America by bus is like touring the Louvre in a Porta Potti.”

— Victor LaValle

53. “Sleeping King. Finally he put food into his mouth, not because he felt hungry, but because he couldn’t think of any other way to shut himself up. He must sound mad.”

— Victor LaValle

54. “Going through all this nonsense to reach someone in charge, this was the first time she’d ever been treated like, well, a patient. With rules that defied all common logic; people employed to help you who are unable, really, to even hear you; the sense that the system’s goal is only to keep trouble contained. It’s.”

— Victor LaValle

55. “To believe in only the practical, the rational, the realistic was a kind of glamour as well. But he couldn’t enjoy the illusion of order anymore. Monsters aren’t real until you meet one.”

— Victor LaValle

56. “Imagine slaying trolls and then being killed by a hit-and-run driver. “We have to wait on the Q11,” Apollo said.”

— Victor LaValle

57. “How many times did you shoot my father?” Tester asked. “I felt in danger for my life,” Mr. Howard said. “I emptied my revolver. Then I reloaded and did it again.”

— Victor LaValle

58. “A bad fairy tale has some simple goddamn moral. A great fairy tale tells the truth.”

— Victor LaValle

59. “Apollo greeted the other fathers, and they greeted him. He didn’t remember their names. They didn’t remember his. They knew the names of each other’s children, and that mattered more.”

— Victor LaValle

60. “What lengths will people stretch to believe they’re still good?”

— Victor LaValle

61. “You know what this country is?” she said. “This country is a man trying to describe a burning building without using the word fire.”

— Victor LaValle

62. “But reconciliation never came easy. Not with the things that mattered.”

— Victor LaValle

63. “No matter where you go, poor people have the capacity to endure. Some people even compliment us on it, as if endurance is all we can achieve.”

— Victor LaValle

64. “I felt in danger for my life,” Mr. Howard said. “I emptied my revolver. Then I reloaded and did it again.” Tester’s.”

— Victor LaValle

65. “If you haven’t caused a scene in a psych unit, it’s just because you haven’t been inside long enough.”

— Victor LaValle

66. “The poor aren’t defeated. We’re domesticated.”

— Victor LaValle

67. “Exactly how many men have you killed here?” Apollo said. “We’re like the police,” Cal said. “We don’t track those numbers.”

— Victor LaValle

68. “This wasn’t about an infraction, but dictating a philosophy of life: certain types of people must be overseen.”

— Victor LaValle

69. “Even worse, there was a smell. Musky and warm, like old blood. It made his throat close, and he wanted to wretch.”

— Victor LaValle

70. “Children sniff out secrets better than the NSA.”

— Victor LaValle

71. “And they lived happily ever after,” Apollo whispered. Emma leaned into him. “Today,” she said. “And they lived happily today.” “Is that enough?” he asked, looking at Brian, looking at her. “That’s everything, my love.”

— Victor LaValle

72. “Maybe nobody ever saw themselves completely objectively. Every self-image needs a flattering mirror or two.”

— Victor LaValle

73. “Bless all families in spirit and reality. For all deserve to be fed, cared for, raised to thrive. Provided with housing and education, embraced as full and free people.”

— Victor LaValle

74. “There was a time in this country when a man like him could be sure his children would do better than he had done. Once that was the birthright of every white man in America. But not anymore. Suddenly men like my son were being passed over in the name of things like ‘fairness’ and ‘balance.’ Where’s the justice in that?”

— Victor LaValle

75. “Josephine didn’t mean to be so dismissive, but it came surprisingly easily. Then, almost as quickly, she questioned many of the judgments she’d made in her life. Mental patients can’t be intelligent, junkies can’t be articulate, and so on. But really, honestly, how many did she actually know?”

— Victor LaValle

76. “They scolded working mothers who were damaging their poor kids by their need to make a living.”

— Victor LaValle

77. “There are no secrets anymore. Vampires can’t come into your house unless you invite them. Posting online is like leaving your front door open and telling any creature of the night it can enter.”

— Victor LaValle

78. “It’s frightening to step into a place and understand you’re a victim. I’m not talking about a bad feeling or a vague sense. I mean knowing. A quick fire runs through your heart and limbs. You go stiff because you’re aware something’s about to happen, but you can’t think clearly enough to escape.”

— Victor LaValle

79. “Because to watch would be to understand the play isn’t being staged for us.”

— Victor LaValle

80. “The best writing deadlines are poverty and death.”

— Victor LaValle

81. “People call us witches,” Cal said quickly. She grabbed Apollo’s hand. “But maybe what they’re really saying is that we were women who did things that seemed impossible. You remember those old stories about mothers who could lift cars when their kids were trapped underneath? I think of it like that. 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 do for the ones we love.”

— Victor LaValle

82. “This was one benefit of being a grown man and not a kid: I wanted to impress this woman, but not to the point of getting myself killed.”

— Victor LaValle

83. “The reward for sacrifice is simply more sacrifices.”

— Victor LaValle

84. “Do you know how much harm ‘happily ever after’ has done to mankind? I wish they said something else at the end of those stories instead. ‘They tried to be happy.’ Or ‘Eternal happiness is a fruitless pursuit.”

— Victor LaValle

85. “He had, in fact, expected to be paid to play for one evening because that’s exactly what the man promised three days earlier. But a wealthy man’s reality is remade at will.”

— Victor LaValle

86. “The median age of these customers was billionaire.”

— Victor LaValle

87. “Apollo felt as if he glowed with grief, poisoned with mourning instead of radiation.”

— Victor LaValle

88. “He was still on his “two Van Goghs” point. He put his hand on the armrest of her chair. He said, “But the second Van Gogh is just a guy named Vincent. Vincent lived for thirty-seven years. Van Gogh only came to life after Vincent died. Same man, two people.”

— Victor LaValle

89. “This woman. Will we see her recorded as a brave soldier in their war? Or will she risk being forgotten? We can do our part. We can remember her. History is simple, but the past is complicated. I, for one, embrace the complications.”

— Victor LaValle

90. “There are two kinds of people in this world: those who live with shame, and those who die from it.”

— Victor LaValle

91. “Better to have a human cause for this horror. Something that could be understood by all, explained easily, brought to justice.”

— Victor LaValle

92. “On Tuesday, Adelaide Henry had been a farmer. On Wednesday, she became a fugitive.”

— Victor LaValle

93. “As vast as the land could seem, it shrank in comparison to all that he – that anyone – kept within.”

— Victor LaValle

94. “Tipsy people are chatty. Drunks harangue.”

— Victor LaValle

95. “A woman is a mule.”

— Victor LaValle

96. “I’ll show you all things I can spell with a little spilled blood.”

— Victor LaValle

97. “Hard times make people scared. And scared people see monsters everywhere.”

— Victor LaValle

98. “A home is never finished, it’s only saved from decay.”

— Victor LaValle