Quotes

[on how he broke his hand in court] I was trying to get him [the defendant] to say the baby's pelvis was broken by a blow, not from being shaken. He said both points of the pelvis were broken, something hard to do with a single blow. So I told him to mark on my hand the space between those two points. Then I spun around and chopped a piece of the wall behind me. I was expecting to hit plaster; I also hit a stud.

Sure I do [believe in rehabilitation]. I broke my hand a bunch of times, it works fine now. It's been rehabilitated.

I've learned to ice the rage. So I don't act out, like I did plenty of times when I was younger. It burns just the same. Especially since it's constantly refueled.

[All of my books are named after women because] the strongest, finest, bravest people I've ever met have been women.

I have one degenerate who constantly sends me funeral cards commiserating with me about the death of my loved ones. I get phone calls, where people say, 'we're going to kill you'. I get mail, which varies from 'I'm going to name my child after you' to 'I hope you die of AIDS'. I'm immune to being upset by a letter. My nerve-endings are pretty cauterised. I have to look at things that would make a normal person sick.

In some ways law school felt like a joke to me. There were all these kids saying 'oh my God, I'm afraid of failing an exam', whereas I'd been shot at, had razors thrown at me, and had my jaw and my ribs broken.

My idea of exercise is lighting cigarettes with wooden matches instead of a Zippo.

It [the setting of the Burke series] is a pulp setting to people whose life experiences are limited. Labels come easy but definitions come hard. I've read pulp magazines, but I don't see the resemblance. I have a short story coming out in the December Playboy. Am I a Playboy writer? I write for Parade magazine. Am I a Parade writer? I think people confuse the forum with the person. You might as well say I am a truck driver, because I can drive trucks.

I have been serially married.

I'm trying to soften my approach because what is standard in New York is terrifying here [Portland]. I tend to make people nervous, because I'm a very intense person, and I don't take jokes well if they are on the wrong subject.

My parents were very loving and protective.

It is not a fashion statement. I got hit in the face with a chain when I was a child, the muscles got severed, they were tied together into square knots. ... If this (good) eye went, I couldn't read with (the patched eye), but I wouldn't need a seeing eye dog to get across the road. If I didn't have to wear it, I wouldn't.

[I've received] hundreds [of death threats in my career], without question. But I don't know if the same freak is writing all the letters. I kind of doubt it, unless he is really well traveled. [smiles]

The first time I interviewed one little girl I didn't know what I was doing. I asked her to sit on my lap, and she said sure. Then she grabbed my genitals. I pulled her away and she said, 'All daddies like that.' She got upset - here she was being nice to me. I saw red dots in front of my eyes. I can't describe my feelings. But there's nothing anyone could say now that could make me even blink.

[on being regarded as off-kilter as a childless children's attorney] That's like saying you have to be black to be concerned about civil rights, or you have to be a dolphin to be concerned about tuna nets.

[My last name is] your typical Ellis Island renovated name. [I have] Hungarian, Spanish, Greek and Gypsy ancestry.

They could [make the assumption I myself was a victim of child abuse], but it would be an ignorant one. As a child, the only place I knew I was safe was inside my own home. And a lot of children can't say that.

I've done interviews with international papers that have only lasted four and a half minutes. "How come you have a patch over your eye? Is that a tattoo on your right hand? How many times have you been married? Thank you."

The place [ANDROS II, a maximum-security juvenile facility near Boston] was below a jungle when I got there [in 1972]. I learned that you can run a jail without letting the inmates run the show.

What strikes me about (expletive) stupid (expletive) book reviewers is they say the books are unreal because they're comparing them to movies, which is their test of reality. I'll never forget the guy who asked me, 'Isn't it a rush to get shot at?'

[Over the years, I have been] hit in the face with a 2-by-4, my jaw's been broken twice, my nose three times. [By whom?] People with blunt instruments.

I dress better than I have to for court appearances.

I enlisted in the Marines when I was 17, and scammed several corpsmen by memorizing the eye chart. But a Navy doctor gave me a thorough eye test before induction and, of course, sent me packing.

[President Clinton, attempting to engage Vachss in small talk, noted his slim build and asked if he were a runner, and Vachss' response in its entirety] No.

I grew up on the lower West Side of Manhattan in a friendly working class area. [The same neighborhood that spawned Scorsese's Mean Streets.]

Sure I get depressed. But then I get angry and I'm back in the game.

Well, that dog that I hold... that nobody asked me to do. They asked me to pose with, you know, a gun or something. The reason I used that dog... you know what kind of dog that is? It's a baby pit bull. Most people look at the picture and say, "What a wonderful dog! What a cute, sweet dog!" And that is kind of my point. You get what you raise. So, no. I don't actually pose for stuff. There's hundreds of pictures that have me sort of glaring at somebody. It's not really my taste. [laughs] But for this book, it's so ambitious and it is a departure, so I made sure they took a picture of me at least shaven.

Until the seventh grade, I was a brilliant student. My mother refused the school's efforts to skip me a couple of grades, reasoning that I would lose more socially than I could gain academically. Then puberty hit. I grew increasingly indifferent to school, eventually becoming a virtual nonparticipant. Disinterested, disaffected, just so damn bored. I viewed school as a sentence to be served, and didn't plan on doing more time in college.

I had viewed college as I had high school-something to be endured, with little involvement, and even less personal investment. But, despite my best efforts, the University refused to let me squander my education. No matter where I turned, I was bombarded by social, cultural, and academic opportunities. I assimilated knowledge - and values - through an osmotic process I never truly understood, but deeply felt. Another school might have - justifiably - kicked me to the curb. But Western Reserve lived its own rhetoric, keeping its promise that I could make an impact on the world, by making an impact on me. I didn't appreciate it, then. I didn't understand it. I didn't respect it. Now, I give thanks for it. And I try to always act as I was taught. I keep my promises. I am committed to making an impact. And I don't give up.

I'm never surprised by what people will do to children. Stephen King doesn't know anything about horror. Real horror is the sexual torture of a child, an act that then turns the child into an imitation of its oppressor. That's horror.

[a journalist comments that Vachss' books are full of ugliness; Vachss looks bored] I'm not looking for a date.

[on his tattoo] Some people wear their heart on their sleeve. My fist seemed the right place for me.

I believe that only anger gets something done. I absolutely hope my books make people angry. My anger is very narrowly focused. I don't spread it all over the map; I'm not angry at George Bush. I'm real angry at a whole list of people that I'm in active warfare with, and those are the people I'll deal with. My clients are playing for life-and-death stakes. Every year so many kids are killed who were returned to the people who originally attacked them. To prevent that is war.

I believe I'm still officially classed as a war criminal in Nigeria. In fact the Red Cross plane I flew in had no parachutes; when I asked why, someone said that I'd be crazy to be captured alive...

I'm not selling vigilantism. The parts of the books that have survived from my life are the moralities, the principles and some of the situations, not the characters.

I'm not some middle-class kid who said, you know, 'I'm 19 years old; I think I'll be a lawyer.' I didn't get to go to law school until I was more than a decade out of college. When I did, it was malice aforethought. I knew what I wanted to do and was pretty damned well prepared to do it.

I have always admired females of any species as stronger, more honorable, and less fussy and whiny than males.