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
The best monsters are our anxieties given form. They make sense on the level of a dream – or a nightmare. – Victor LaValle
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
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
It’s tough to write beautifully about ugly things, but Mitchell S. Jackson makes it look easy. – Victor LaValle
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
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
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
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
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
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
When I find the right information, the Web is a blessing; when I don’t, it’s a distraction. – Victor LaValle
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
Fear warps our understanding of reality and even our ability to see reality clearly. – Victor LaValle
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
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
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
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
People use the notion of God to bully people and hurt people, when we can use the concept to respect and uplift. – Victor LaValle
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
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
