People From New York City

"[A]nybody who has served in combat in any way understands that words are weapons. And I'm in a war. The war hasn't stopped. I've always used the books as a blunt instrument."

"We don't distinguish between the various forms of child abuse. Emotional abuse ... is pretty much ignored. When someone spends their life being told, 'You're stupid, you're a disgrace, I should have aborted you, you ruined my life,' it scars them in ways that are almost impossible to describe with words. And yet, such a person describing their life would be told, 'Oh, you weren't an incest victim? Oh, you weren't burned with cigarettes? So, how abused were you really?"

"I promise you, there are people in America whose only problem with the Taliban is that they did it for the wrong god. Whether it's incest, rape, terrorism or Nazism, it's all the same thing—accumulating and abusing power."

"[C]an you be noble as you practice violence, extortion, blackmail, even mass murder? The struggle to be free from oppression is, in my mind, per se noble. But noble causes attract a wide range of participants, and many would fall far short of nobility."

"It's an extremely profitable thing to be 'concerned' about drugs. You don't just have treatment programs, you have law enforcement programs, you have entire industries that could not function but for drugs. Including the prison industry. I think America has gone psychotic ... there are human beings—even as we speak—dying, in the kind of shrieking, tormenting pain you couldn't inflict on a P.O.W., because America doesn't want them to be drug addicts."

"Plenty of states, like Florida, still don't have [law guardians]. What does that tell you? Because with non-attorney guardians there's no attorney-client privilege. There's no ability to cross–examine witnesses, to subpoena evidence, to appeal. Basically you serve completely at the pleasure of the judge. And if you don't please the judge, you're history. What more of a message do kids need?""

"Our reasons for critiquing the [child protection] system [are] pointless. To analyze the system and point out what's wrong with it, without the power to alter it, is masturbatory. The whole concept behind analysis is the concept behind consciousness–raising. Which is, if I show you that something is terrible, you will do something about it. That's not reality. Reality is, it's about power. It's not about education, and knowledge is not power."

"If you look at Burke closely, you'll see the prototypical abused child: hypervigilant, distrustful. He's so committed to his family of choice—not his DNA-biological family, which tortured him, or the state which raised him, but the family that he chose—that homicide is a natural consequence of injuring any of that family. He's not a hit man. But he shares the same religion I do, which is revenge."

"The child most at risk [to be accessed by a predatory pedophile] is the child not bonded deeply to anything or anybody. Children who are most deeply bonded with parents, parents who are protective, it's almost like, I don't know if you've seen predatory animals that put a kind of smell on their young to protect them? Okay? I think your 'luck' was much more likely due to your parent[s] than it was to any blind confluence of the planets."

"I don't love kids. I hate their predators. It's a burning hatred I feel to this day."

"I don't believe this country will ever come to grips with child abuse until they make the obvious, simple connection between today's victim and tomorrow's predator. As long as they believe a Ted Bundy or a John Wayne Gacy is a biogenetic mistake as opposed to a beast that was built and a monster that was made, they'll continue to blithely walk around, saying, 'I'm against child abuse.'""

"I believe that many people who were abused as children do themselves—and the entire struggle—a disservice when they refer to themselves as "survivors." A long time ago, I found myself in the middle of a war zone. I was not killed. Hence, I "survived." That was happenstance ... just plain luck, not due to any greatness of character or heroism on my part. But what about those raised in a POW camp called "childhood?" Some of those children not only lived through it, not only refused to imitate the oppressor (evil is a decision, not a destiny), but actually maintained sufficient empathy to care about the protection of other children once they themselves became adults and were "out of danger." To me, such people are our greatest heroes. They represent the hope of our species, living proof that there is nothing bio–genetic about child abuse. I call them transcenders, because "surviving" (i.e., not dying from) child abuse is not the significant thing. It is when chance becomes choice that people distinguish themselves. Two little children are abused. Neither dies. One grows up and becomes a child abuser. The other becomes a child protector. One "passes it on." One "breaks the cycle." Should we call them both by the same name? Not in my book. (And not in my books, either.)"

"I think that what drives the American public, which is like a huge, lumbering beast, is anger; and the other thing that drives it is self–interest. What I'm trying to do in my books is different from other people writing about child abuse. I'm not trying to engender sympathy so much as to say to the public, 'Today's victim is tomorrow's predator.' The things that you fear have a genesis, and the price of being safe in this world is early intervention. It costs you something to look away, not just in moral terms, but in practical terms."

"Everything that's in [my] books comes out of what I've seen, or touched, or felt, or smelt, and if I had one wish it would be that the books were fiction."

"My position on pornography is quite simple. You can argue about Penthouse or Playboy or things of that ilk. But child pornography, a picture of a child engaged in a sexual act, is a photograph of a crime and you cannot argue about that. It is, per se, illegal, illicit and immoral. It is unfortunate that my work is taken up by people with whom I am not allied."

"There's a very specific formula for creating a monster. It starts with chronic, unrelenting abuse. There's got to be societal notification and then passing on. The child eventually believes that what's being done is societally sanctioned. And after a while, empathy – which we have to learn, we're not born with it – cracks and dies. He feels only his own pain. There's your predatory sociopath." That's why Vachss posed for a recent publicity photo cradling his pit bull puppy. "You know what pit bulls are capable of, right?" he asks, referring to the animal's notorious killer reputation. "But they're also capable of being the most wonderful, sweet pets in the world, depending on how you raise them. That's all our children.""

"When someone asks me, 'Why do you write comics?' I tell them, for the same reason I write editorials, essays, and articles; the same reason I give speeches; the same reason I appear on TV programs, and give interviews. Same message; different forum. There is no universal forum, so the more outreach we can do, the better the chance of forming coalitions."

"The biggest threat to children is always inside their houses. The predator with the ski-mask who grabs the kid out of a van, while a real thing, is a tiny percentage of those who prey upon children. Most victimization of children is within the Circle of Trust—not necessarily a parent, but somebody who was let into that circle, who can be a counselor, or a coach, or someone at a day-care center. The biggest danger to children is that they're perceived as property, not human beings."

"A drive to right! Back to Georgia! Gone! A grand slam! What a scene at Shea!"

"What's up with the racewalkers? I mean I respect them as athletes but come on... a contest to see who can walk the fastest is like having a contest to see who can whisper the loudest."

"Back from the brink of elimination to the brink of the NBA Finals!"

"The men in teal are for real."

"McKey...gets it in to Miller for the win...IT'S THERE! Four tenths of a second! Yeah, you can dance, Reggie! One of the greatest clutch playoff performers of his generation has apparently done it again!"

"Seventeen seconds from game seven or from championship number six. Jordan...open...CHICAGO WITH THE LEAD!"

"Tony Fernández, who has worn hero's laurels throughout the postseason, including earlier in this seventh game of the World Series—now, cruel as it may seem, perhaps being fitted for goat horns."

"Bryant...TO SHAQ!"

"Costas: But look who gets it next! Enberg: The Greatest! Oh my!"

"Our game today was produced by Ken Edmunson, directed by Bucky Guntz; Mike Weisman is the executive producer of NBC Sports, coordinating producer of baseball, Harry Coyle. The 1-1 pitch...He hits it to deep left field, LOOK OUT! DO YOU BELIEVE IT! IT'S GONE!!"

"Into left-center field and deep, THIS IS A TIE BALLGAME!"

"Grissom on the run... The team of the '90s has its World Championship!"

"Relentless execution without knowing what to execute is a crime."

"In a startup, founders define the product vision and then use customer discovery to find customers and a market for that vision."

"On Day One, a startup is a faith-based enterprise."

"If you're afraid to fail in a startup, you're destined to do so."

"Don’t execute other peoples advice if you can’t explain why you’re doing it."

"A startup is not a smaller version of a large company."

"A startup is a temporary organization in search of a scalable, repeatable, profitable business model."

"Market type influences everything a company does."

"Customer Development says “Glad you have these hypotheses about your startup. All of them are probably wrong.”"

"Progress and stability are mutually exclusive."

"Startups demand comfort with chaos, uncertainty and change."

"Number one is "Do you have curiosity?" Number two is "Does it translate to imagination?" But number three is "Did it translate to action?" That’s the difference between someone with an idea and someone who is an entrepreneur."

"No business plan survives its first contact with customers."

"Only because earlyvangelists are buying into your total vision will they spend money for an incomplete, buggy, barely functions first product."

"The question is whether you'll tell your children that this decade was the beginning of a new dark age, or whether it was the time of something new and wonderful."

"Light a path for the better angels. The world is counting on you."

"You don't need to be the smartest person to be the most effective. Being effective means not just mastering the facts but figuring out how to move your agenda forward."

"Will you let darker angels win as you add fire to the flame, or will you seek out and spread real news?"

"I’ve watched how, in a blink of an eye, technology went from products used by the very few, to ending up in the pockets of billions, bringing social change and corporate disruption."

"Only a few generations have been granted the role of determining whether a revolution in communication will allow our better angels – or our darker angels – to win. You leave here with incredible opportunity, but also with immense responsibility."