Victor J. Banis > Quotes

“A good story is a dream shared by the author and the reader. Anything that wakes the reader from the dream is a mortal sin.”
― Victor J. Banis

“It doesn't matter what the question is, Alex, the answer is always love”
― Victor J. Banis

“Write with love, write with joy, and write with pride.”
― Victor J Banis

“Only the mediocre artist is always at his best.”
― Victor J. Banis

“Some people want everything for nothing.”
― Victor J. Banis, Deadly Nightshade

“Tom gave him a suspicious look. “Stanley, you’ve never actually worked a homicide investigation, right?”
“No, but how hard can it be? You collect all the clues and you put them together, and voila. I have read a lot of mystery novels.”
― Victor J. Banis, Deadly Nightshade

“I wasn't the smartest kid in town but I've always thought if you hang around with smart people some of it's bound to rub off.”
― Victor J. Banis, Angel Land

“I think this guy’s dead,” the coroner said, scooting another inch or two, to be safe.
“There’s something wrong here,” Tom said. They both looked at him.
“No, I’m pretty sure of it,” the coroner said. “That bullet hole, for one thing. Plus, he’s not breathing. That’s the kind of thing we look for.”
― Victor J. Banis, Deadly Nightshade

“Everything has its price," Reverend Willows said. "The sunset costs us the moment in which we pause to look at it. We pay for a great love or a great dream in self-discipline, in self-sacrifice, in the giving of our love and our time and sometimes the sacrificing of our happiness." He grew silent. After a moment she realized that he was praying, his head bowed, his eyes closed. She was embarrassed, thinking that she was an intrusion upon his privacy, but when a moment later he opened his eyes, he smiled with surprising shyness and said, "A very impressive cathedral, isn't it?"

He left her there. She looked and saw that the sky had turned pink and coral and gray, and as the light of dawn was born in the sky, a new light was born within her, too. There was a new day before them and with it new hope, new possibilities. A thousand men before her, a thousand million people, had looked up at the reddening sky or had seen the fragile green budding of the trees in spring, had heard the sudden song of a bird winging skywar, and had felt hope rekindled in their breasts. The dark night was over, the long winter ended, God was still in his heaven. How plain, how often repeated those homilies, yet what succor they gave. A bird cried somewhere in the rocks above her, and now in the distant valley she could see the glow of campfires and the smoke rising from the brown bosom of the land.

At last she turned and went down the path to the wagons. And she, child of the earth, felt a thrill of response within her. She was thousands of miles from France. Between here and there lay an entire continent and a vast ocean, and yet in her heart she suddenly felt that she had come home.”
― Victor J. Banis, This Splendid Earth

“You couldn’t hide that friendly giant from somebody rimming your butthole.”
― Victor J. Banis, Deadly Nightshade

“Sexual normalcy and abnormality are personal and subjective concepts. What is unnatural to one [person] is natural to another. What is abnormal under certain conditions may be completely normal under others. And, in any event, to be different is not necessarily to be wrong, or to be sick.”
― Victor J. Banis

“Lust, plain and simple - if lust was ever simple.”
― Victor J. Banis, A Prayer for the Dead

“It ain't brave if you ain't scared.”
― Victor J. Banis, Angel Land

“What’s that shit?”
“Bubbles. It’s a bubble bath.”
“Jesus H. Christ, I can’t take a bubble bath. What’ll people think? If anybody found out I was taking bubble baths…”
“Well, why don’t you climb into the tub and I’ll go fight off the paparazzi, okay?”
― Victor J. Banis, Deadly Nightshade

“Claude's mother could be frightfully stubborn once she made up her mind to something. In her own way Anne was as private a person as little David; in the end she would do exactly what she wanted to do.”
― Victor J. Banis, This Splendid Earth

“Queers make the best monks.”
― Victor J. Banis, A Prayer for the Dead

“We live surrounded by God's pattern but we aren't high enough to see it. You can elevate yourself, of course. That's the whole point of education, of meditation and prayer. The more one lifts oneself up, the more of the pattern he is able to make out, though only an enlightened few have a perspective lofty enough to see the outline whole.”
― Victor J. Banis, Angel Land

“The thing is,” Tom said, “I won’t come.”

“Just to spoil my fun? Or you think you’re still too weak?”
― Victor J. Banis, Deadly Nightshade

“To any kind of sex, if you were honest. I’ve got a pole, you’ve got a hole, that’s what it all came down to.”
― Victor J. Banis, Deadly Nightshade

“Books of value are just like people of value-they try only to elevate others, to help them to rise and to grow.”
― Victor J. Banis, Angel Land