Victor Lavalle Quotes

Powerful Victor Lavalle for Daily Growth

About Victor Lavalle

Victor LaValle is a renowned American author known for his unique blend of horror, fantasy, and social commentary in literature. Born on February 18, 1972, in Brooklyn, New York, he was raised in the borough's Gerritsen Beach neighborhood by his mother, a school teacher, and stepfather, an electrician. His upbringing in a predominantly African-American community significantly influenced his work, providing him with a rich cultural background and insightful perspective on race relations in America. LaValle attended Truman High School and later graduated from the Columbia University School of General Studies with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. His Master's degree in Fine Arts came from the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing Program. His debut novel, "Big Machine," published in 2009, was met with critical acclaim for its exploration of family dynamics and urban legends within an afrofuturistic setting. However, it was his subsequent work, "The Devil in Silver" (2012), that truly propelled him into the limelight. The novel, set in a psychiatric hospital with supernatural elements, critiqued mental health care systems and their disproportionate impact on minorities. In 2016, LaValle released "The Ballad of Black Tom," a Lovecraftian novella reimagining H.P. Lovecraft's "The Horror at Red Hook" from the perspective of an African-American protagonist. This work showcased his mastery in blending horror with social commentary and was nominated for multiple awards, further cementing LaValle as a significant figure in contemporary literature. Today, Victor LaValle continues to produce gripping and thought-provoking stories that resonate deeply with readers. His works often grapple with themes of race, family, identity, and the supernatural, making him an essential voice in modern American fiction.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"The struggle against fear and ignorance is the struggle for memory."

This quote by Victor LaValle emphasizes that overcoming fear and ignorance is fundamentally tied to preserving and nurturing memory. The struggle here refers to our collective efforts in understanding the world, confronting our fears, and dismantling ignorance – actions that demand we remember our history, learn from it, and pass on knowledge to future generations. Memory, in this context, serves as a beacon of wisdom, empowering us to make informed decisions, cultivate empathy, and create a more enlightened society.

"The world is full of stories yet untold. People's lives are like that too."

This quote emphasizes the richness and depth of human experiences, likening individual lives to uncharted stories waiting to be discovered. It suggests that just as there are countless tales to be told about the world around us, so too are there unique narratives hidden within each person's life journey. It encourages empathy, understanding, and curiosity towards others, inviting us to listen, learn, and appreciate the diverse stories that make up our shared human experience.

"I think what we're all trying to do is make our way through a world that is, in many ways, unkind and inhospitable, and find the small spaces where kindness and love exist."

This quote by Victor LaValle captures the human struggle for connection and compassion amidst an often harsh and indifferent world. It suggests that people are seeking refuge and solace in the rare instances of kindness and love, which serve as beacons in the vastness of the unkind and inhospitable society. In essence, it is a reminder that we all search for these small yet significant moments of humanity to find comfort and inspiration on our individual journeys.

"We cannot escape our history, but we can transform it."

This quote by Victor LaValle suggests that one's past, or historical context, is an unavoidable aspect of one's identity and experiences. However, the power lies not in being trapped by the past, but in using it as a foundation to create positive change and transformation. It encourages people to learn from their history, understand its impact, and work towards progress, growth, and betterment, rather than being defined or limited by it.

"The past haunts us like the ghosts of those we have loved; we can't get rid of them, but we can learn to live with them."

This quote highlights the enduring impact of our past experiences, particularly those involving significant relationships. The "ghosts" symbolize memories or emotions associated with those who are no longer present in our lives. Rather than trying to erase these memories, which is often impossible, Lavalle suggests we learn to coexist with them. This implies developing emotional maturity and resilience, accepting the past as an integral part of our personal growth, and using it as a foundation for shaping a meaningful present and future.

I was dressed like Darth Vader. Vader was my man, even with the villainy. He wore all black and had a deep voice; he reminded me of my uncle. I had a cheap mask-cape combo, the kind available at any pharmacy during October.

- Victor LaValle

Deep, Voice, Uncle, Villainy

For as long as I could remember, the person in E23 pasted the same Halloween decoration, a witch with a giant wart on her crone's nose, but whenever kids rang, the tenant wouldn't answer. At first, kids figured they'd just missed the guy: bad timing. But it seemed impossible that all of us missed him every year.

- Victor LaValle

Impossible, Bad, Year, Witch

People use the notion of God to bully people and hurt people, when we can use the concept to respect and uplift.

- Victor LaValle

Uplift, Use, Notion, Bully

The journalistic endeavor - at least theoretically - is grounded in objectivity. The goal is to get you to understand what happened, when and to whom.

- Victor LaValle

Goal, Endeavor, Journalistic, Theoretically

You can't write a story about a mental hospital in the United States without facing the grand example of 'Cuckoo's Nest.'

- Victor LaValle

United, United States, About, Nest

Our family suffers from a hereditary condition called, generally, mental illness. Specifically, multiple family members in successive generations have suffered from either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

- Victor LaValle

Mental, Generations, Suffers, Specifically

'The Devil's Dictionary' reads like a collection of great Twitter posts. And as people do with tweets, they can swipe Bierce's best lines and recite them as nearly their own. The reflected glory of reposting.

- Victor LaValle

Own, Like, Nearly, Swipe

I like America, where believers eddy around each other like currents of air. Even our atheists are devout! To be an American is to be a believer. I don't have much faith in institutions, but I still believe in people.

- Victor LaValle

Other, Atheists, Believers, Currents

In the end, what's any good reader really hoping for? That spark. That spell. That journey.

- Victor LaValle

Journey, Hoping, Spell, Spark

Shirley Jackson enjoyed notoriety and commercial success within her lifetime, and yet it still hardly seems like enough for a writer so singular. When I meet readers and other writers of my generation, I find that mentioning her is like uttering a holy name.

- Victor LaValle

Other, Commercial, Shirley, Hardly

I couldn't get a date, but I couldn't be quite sure how unattractive I'd become. I was still friendly; I made jokes, and in my mind, if I saw a woman smiling at me... I still had a chance. I did not.

- Victor LaValle

Mind, Date, Still, Unattractive

I wanted to write a story set in the Lovecraftian universe that didn't gloss over the uglier implications of his worldview.

- Victor LaValle

Over, Set, Implications, Uglier

When I finished graduate school, I had a master's of fine arts from a prestigious institution, a manuscript that would eventually become my first published book - and almost no marketable skills.

- Victor LaValle

Book, Had, Almost, Graduate School

One of the most widely read novels by a black American is Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man.' It is his masterwork - it won the National Book Award in 1953 and catapulted my man to the highest levels of literary esteem.

- Victor LaValle

Book, Invisible, Literary, Novels

I can't inhabit my characters until I know what kind of work they do. This requires research because my jobs for the last decade have been author and professor, and I'd like to spare the world more author or professor novels.

- Victor LaValle

Research, Decade, Been, Novels

Whether it was H. P. Lovecraft's doomed towns or Shirley Jackson's lonely, looming 'The Haunting of Hill House,' the boondocks had all the fun. As a black kid in Queens, New York, I couldn't have felt more removed.

- Victor LaValle

Kid, Had, Shirley, Doomed

The horror genre is vast and full of brilliance. Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Herman Melville, the book of Esther. I'll happily join that list.

- Victor LaValle

King, Horror, Shirley, Brilliance

I hadn't stopped fearing the chance of passing on an illness, but that fear had become balanced by the observation that being ill wasn't the same as being beaten.

- Victor LaValle

Chance, Observation, Stopped, Passing

I have a very intimate knowledge of the world of the mentally ill and of life inside of, especially, public hospitals and the way people are treated in there and the way that they try to survive in there.

- Victor LaValle

Hospitals, Treated, Very, To Survive

When I find the right information, the Web is a blessing; when I don't, it's a distraction.

- Victor LaValle

Distraction, Find, Web, Blessing

I'd read at a much higher-than-average grade level since, well, grade school.

- Victor LaValle

School, Level, Read, Grade School

There's the wonder of being able to do research from your own living room, of course. I do find that my biggest research issue, though, is how to frame my questions.

- Victor LaValle

Living, Issue, Though, Frame

Social media give me the privilege of learning about more people than I could meet in my whole life. Taken together, the Internet reads like the grandest character-driven novel humanity has ever known. Not much plot, though.

- Victor LaValle

Learning, About, Whole, Social Media

Education is gathering information and reading... No human being can thrive without some form of education. How you get it is up to you - the important thing is that you get it.

- Victor LaValle

Education, Some, Human Being, Thrive

'The Ballad of Black Tom' was written, in part, during the latest round of arguments about H. P. Lovecraft's legacy as both a great writer and a prejudiced man. I grew up worshipping the guy, so this issue felt quite personal to me.

- Victor LaValle

Legacy, Part, About, Ballad

I'm always trying to make myself laugh. I'm the most enthusiastic audience I'm likely to find, so if it doesn't make me smile then it probably won't work on you. The jokes that only make me shrug get cut.

- Victor LaValle

Smile, Find, Cut, Jokes

I know that many authors say editors don't edit anymore, but that's not been true in my experience.

- Victor LaValle

Say, Been, Edit, Editors

The people I am most interested in are the ones on the edge of losing everything and falling into the last bit of despair. I'm trying to write about how people exist on that edge and how they can come back.

- Victor LaValle

Falling, Last, About, Despair

Since Queens is the most ethnically diverse plot of land on Earth, we had tenants from all over the globe. The whole world in one building.

- Victor LaValle

Over, Had, Whole, Diverse

The project of Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man' is exactly that: to assert the beautiful, bountiful, chaotic complexity of one black American male. And, by extension, all black American males.

- Victor LaValle

Complexity, Ralph, Extension, Chaotic

Miniature golf, like billiards, is a game of angles. And, like billiards, most of the fun is in pretending you know what the hell you're doing. The worse you do, the more you have to laugh.

- Victor LaValle

Game, Doing, Pretending, Laugh

I weighed 25 stone, and I didn't stand nine feet tall, so the weight didn't sit well on me. As big as a house? No. I was as big as an estate.

- Victor LaValle

Feet, Big, Nine, Stone

I realise I might pass down an incurable illness to my son, but living based on what might go wrong seems like less and less of a life as I get older. The one thing I can try to control is whether I teach my child to be ruled by anxiety, by fear. That's something that gets passed down, too.

- Victor LaValle

Life, Down, I Can, Illness

My three obsessions are mental illness, horror and religion.

- Victor LaValle

Mental, Horror, Obsessions, Illness

One of the reasons I love devils so much is not based in my faith, but because as a kid, I grew up loving heavy metal and horror movies, and the devil is such a huge presence in both.

- Victor LaValle

Love, Kid, Reasons, Presence

There are times when I need to dig up the diagram for a type of satellite dish, for instance, but I just can't seem to phrase this need correctly. As a result, I'm inundated by advertising for satellite television and people's online customer reviews of such services when, in fact, I was only trying to figure out what a certain component is called.

- Victor LaValle

Fact, Dig, Instance, Diagram

As a 13-year-old fan of horror fiction, I hadn't seen too many cities in the literature I loved. It was always small towns, or backwoods locales, or maybe the suburbs.

- Victor LaValle

Small, Always, Suburbs, Small Towns

Try imagining James Joyce not writing about being a Catholic.

- Victor LaValle

Writing, About, James, Catholic

On June 23, 1864, Ambrose Bierce was in command of a skirmish line of Union soldiers at Kennesaw Mountain in northern Georgia. He'd been a soldier for three years and, in that time, had been commended by his superiors for his efficiency and bravery during battle.

- Victor LaValle

Soldiers, Line, Been, Bravery

I didn't grow up in a small New England town like the one in 'The Sundial.' I was raised in an apartment building in Queens, not in a sprawling, slightly sinister mansion like the one where the Halloran family resides.

- Victor LaValle

Small, Slightly, Resides, Queens

The best monsters are our anxieties given form. They make sense on the level of a dream - or a nightmare.

- Victor LaValle

Level, Given, Form, Anxieties

It's tough to write beautifully about ugly things, but Mitchell S. Jackson makes it look easy.

- Victor LaValle

Ugly, About, Makes, Beautifully

'Dark Gods,' T. E. D. Klein's book of four novellas, felt like a godsend - even if it came from a deformed god, one that lurked beneath our sidewalks.

- Victor LaValle

Like, Beneath, Gods, T

Every era needs a genre through which it understands itself.

- Victor LaValle

Through, Needs, Which, Understands

One of the things that doesn't come up as much as it should, especially in literary fiction, is this idea of faith and God... I feel like those are things that should be wrestled with... because they are such an integral part of our community on every level.

- Victor LaValle

Fiction, One Of The Things, Literary Fiction

Here's the thing: I was charming. Well read and well spoken. Observant and even kind. In other words, I was kind of a catch. And I knew this was true. As long as you couldn't see me. If you saw me, you'd think I was the sea cow that had swallowed your catch.

- Victor LaValle

Cow, Here, Other, In Other Words

Clothes are a kind of uniform. A nun's habit, a surgeon's scrubs, a cop's uniform. People often say that when they put on a certain uniform, they actually think of themselves differently.

- Victor LaValle

Think, Kind, Cop, Scrub

I spend lots of time on the Web, some of it even useful.

- Victor LaValle

Some, Web, Lots, Useful

The profession is never going back to those days when a handful of wealthy people treated publishing like a hobby: one where the business can lose money because the family has lots of it to burn. Frankly, I don't think that model was ever sustainable, and it really only enriched a small number of writers.

- Victor LaValle

Small, Wealthy, Sustainable, Hobby

In the past, a writer had to go outside and get to know others before learning about their work, but the Internet has made humanity more accessible for misanthropes like me. I read blogs, tweets, Facebook posts and Reddit threads where people detail their jobs.

- Victor LaValle

Before, Accessible, Blogs, Detail

Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' was a story about the fear of immigration; the bad old bloodsucker swooping in from Eastern Europe and also preying upon 'our' vulnerable women.

- Victor LaValle

Immigration, Bad, Eastern, Europe

I've spent my life visiting a handful of people who are very close to me when they've been committed to one hospital or another in New York.

- Victor LaValle

My Life, New, Very, Hospital

The devil that stayed with me most vividly was the one from the cover of Iron Maiden's 'Number of the Beast' album.

- Victor LaValle

Devil, Beast, Album, Iron

Booksellers are the bartenders of the reading world. People share thoughts and interests they keep private from others in their lives.

- Victor LaValle

Thoughts, Private, Lives, Interests

What's beautiful about Godzilla is, of course, it's in every way a symbol of Japan dealing with the aftermath of the atomic bombs being dropped on them, and their ideas of how they're affected by it.

- Victor LaValle

Dealing, Japan, Symbol, Aftermath

If you want to learn the true nature of a child you have to watch how she plays. If you want to learn the true nature of an adult you have to watch how she does her job.

- Victor LaValle

Nature, Learn, Plays, Adult

I'm a big fan of monsters. Number one, they're fun, and two, they're such great ways to access the subconscious fears and beliefs of any group of people.

- Victor LaValle

Big, Two, Access, Monsters

I had a pretty bad time when I was an undergraduate at Cornell University. I failed out of school. I was much, much heavier.

- Victor LaValle

Bad, Pretty, Bad Time, Failed

In fiction, it's a big challenge to keep the reader in one place for so long.

- Victor LaValle

Big, Fiction, Reader, Big Challenge

Lonely women destroy themselves; lonely men threaten the world.

- Victor LaValle

World, Themselves, Threaten, Destroy

Lumpy and lazy; I aspired to lethargy. In the second year of university, I missed half my classes just because I couldn't pull myself out of bed.

- Victor LaValle

Year, Bed, Half, Aspired

Fear warps our understanding of reality and even our ability to see reality clearly.

- Victor LaValle

Understanding, See, Even, Clearly

'The Sundial' is written with the kind of humor that would make a guillotine laugh.

- Victor LaValle

Kind, Would, Written, Humor

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