Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The only time I ever met a character that I wrote was when I met Ian McKellan, when he was playing Magneto in the 'X-Men' movies.
He felt the hot impact of bullets. He heard the sound of chopping meat. He thought 'is that me?' . . . and then he opened his eyes.
Einstein was wrong! I"M the speed of like CRACKING through shivery rainbows and GOD the sky whirls and withers like a melting RAINBOW!
I don't like to think of my readership as 'fans,' a word which has always suggested a kind of power relationship I'm uncomfortable with.
I don't like to think of my readership as "fans," a word which has always suggested a kind of power relationship I'm uncomfortable with.
Sometimes I pretend not to look at my own characters, because that's like different people getting off with your girlfriend or something.
Seven actors have played Batman on the big screen, and if you can name all seven without reading any further, your youth has been wasted.
We're the new power, come to replace the old. Cameras in the head, children with microchips, spin doctors rewriting reality as it happens.
Life doesn't have plots and subplots and denouements. It's just a big collection of loose ends and dangling threads that never get explained.
I guess my inspiration is this - I like to pretend that every story that ever happened to 'Batman' was real and is part of this one guy's life.
It’s mostly just you have to convince yourself that there’s nothing else in the room but John Lennon and suddenly things start John Lennon-ing!
He read me extracts from a medical journal describing the progress of a staphylococcus aureus infection. And then he pleasured me with a potato.
Your character that you create in your writing not only represents who you are, but also represents a number of people who you've met along the way.
I think that superhero comics in particular are really useful for talking about big emotions and feelings, and personifying and concretizing symbols.
Why am I in Hell? It hurts. It hurts all the time. Why am I in Hell? I just want to go home and lie on the bed the way I used to. Please take me home.
Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases.
I don't ignore continuity, and try my best to stick as closely to the current status quo as possible, but it's not my primary concern when I start a story.
Unlike novel characters, comic book characters last an eternity. When a character is changed beyond recognition, there's no longer the merchandising aspect.
If our shallow, self-critical culture sometimes seems to lack a sense of the numinous or spiritual it's only in the same way a fish lacks a sense of the ocean.
The perfect fascist state needs to operate in conditions of perpetual warfare. Have you ever noticed how the world has been in constant crisis since World War II?
These characters were like twelve-bar blues or other chord progressions. Given the basic parameters of Batman, different creators could play very different music.
The only thing that made me, or any of us, special was that no one in the whole of history would ever see the universe exactly the same way any other of us saw it.
I’m a false icon! The media collaborate in promoting my superficial lifestyle as somehow more valid, more worthy of attention than your real lives! - Gideon Stargrave
And when it's all done, when there's no one left you'll come back for me. And tell me who I am and why I have to do what I do. And explain 'Eternity.' You'll come back
It's hard for me to believe that a shy, bespectacled college graduate like Brad Meltzer who's a novelist and a father is a really setting out to be weirdly misogynistic.
The world gets more like Disneyland every day, and it's the same the other way round. I can't explain what I know. Try explaining RED to a DOG and see how fast he gets bored.
I think any writer coming on to Batman should at least attempt to do their own definitive version. What it means to them. Whatever they think that symbol or character can say.
Write comic books if you love comic books so much that you want to write them. Don't write them like movies. Comics can do a lot of things that movies can't do, and vice versa.
I think any writer coming on to 'Batman' should at least attempt to do their own definitive version. What it means to them. Whatever they think that symbol or character can say.
I use everything. Turning life into stories is how I make sense of my experience. No matter how weird or disturbing or upsetting to me personally, it all finds its way in there.
There are dozens of unfinished or aborted projects in my files, but I can only assume they don't get done because they're not robust enough to struggle through the birth process.
I was always interested in myths growing up. So, first I got into some Roman myths, then I was interested in Norse, then Celtic, then I started spreading to all the other mythologies.
Sometimes... sometimes I think the Asylum is a head. We're inside a huge head that dreams us all into being. Perhaps it's your head, Batman. Arkham is a looking glass... and we are you.
It surprises me constantly that my sometimes-unorthodox approach has such a large following, but I'm very grateful to my readers for allowing me to continue writing 10 or 12 hours a day.
I can always see ways to improve what I've done. At the same time, knowing it's all an ongoing life's work allows me to be less precious about blind alleys, failed experiments, and misfires.
Actually, it's as if [Superman is] more real than we are. We writers come and go, generations of artists leave their interpretations, and yet something persists, something that is always Superman.
All I know is that you won't come back until they're all dead. 'Eternity.' Every last one of them. Every man. Every woman. Every child. Global massacre. I dream about that day. A planet of corpses
I AM happy”. They understood what we english people have long forgot. We're not our sadness. We're not our happiness or our pain but our language hypnotizes us and traps us in little labelled boxes ()
I plan years in advance, but I like to leave enough space in the narrative scheme to change things, because I always get my best ideas the closer I come to the end of a project, after I've lived with it for a while.
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
We've always known we'd eventually be called upon to open our shirts and save the day, and the superhero was a crude, hopeful attempt to talk about how we all might feel on that day of great power, and great responsibility.
Look at us! Are we not proof that there is no good, no evil, no truth, no reason? Are we not proof that the universe is a drooling idiot with no fashion sense - Mr Nobody on the fundamental philosophy of the Brotherhood of DADA
I should say I am far more cleverer than any of the people who put me here. As a matter of fact, I could leave any time I wanted. It's only a doll house after all. Anyway, I don't mind. I like dolls. Particularly the live ones.
I love 'Batman.' I love the Adam West 'Batman.' I love the animated 'Batman.' The character of Batman can encompass any interpretation, which is what makes that character so brilliant and why it's survived so many different media.
I prefer working out of strict continuity, because no normal human being can have a firm grip on the constantly shifting bardo-like territory of a comics universe, where entire histories can be erased by a strong enough super-sneeze.
Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world.
I'm lucky to have a job doing something I really love to do, and I'm happy to accept the pressures of relentless deadlines or reader expectations as necessary evils. It's probably not as stressful as mining coal or leading men into battle.
Why did you make it so hard for me? I'd rather empty the ocean with a sieve. I do it for you. Or count the grains of sand on every beach. All for you. There are so many people, so many countries. But I have time. All the time in the world. Eternity.
Gayness is built into Batman. I'm not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There's just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he's intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay.
I'm at a stage in my career where I don't expect or get too much editorial input into what I'm doing. I have a proven track record of success, so my editors are willing to cut me some slack even when a particular approach is not to their personal taste.