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I Sat On The Bed. I Looked At The Rorschach Blot. I Tried To Make It Look Like A Spreading Tree, Shadows Pooled Beneath It, But It Didn't. It Looked More Like A Dead Cat I Once Found, The Fat, Glistening Grubs Writhing Blindly, Squirming Over Each Other, Frantically Tunneling Away From The Light. But Even That Isn't The Real Horror. The Horror Is This: In The End, It Is Simply A Picture Of Empty Meaningless Blackness.

-Alan Moore

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I Sat On The

Alan Moore

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I Sat On The Bed. I Looked At The Rorschach Blot. I Tried To Make It Look Like A Spreading Tree, Shadows Pooled Beneath It, But It Didn't. It Looked More Like A Dead Cat I Once Found, The Fat, Glistening Grubs Writhing Blindly, Squirming Over Each Other, Frantically Tunneling Away From The Light. But Even That Isn't The Real Horror. The Horror Is This: In The End, It Is Simply A Picture Of Empty Meaningless Blackness.

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A Lot Of The Critique Of Our Growing Mechanization Was Actually At Its Strongest, And Arguably At Its Most Perceptive, During The Late '60s.

My Experience Of Life Is That It Is Not Divided Up Into Genres; It’s A Horrifying, Romantic, Tragic, Comical, Science-fiction Cowboy Detective Novel. You Know, With A Bit Of Pornography If You're Lucky.

To Me, All Creativity Is Magic. Ideas Start Out In The Empty Void Of Your Head - And They End Up As A Material Thing, Like A Book You Can Hold In Your Hand. That Is The Magical Process. It's An Alchemical Thing. Yes, We Do Get The Gold Out Of It But That's Not The Most Important Thing. It's The Work Itself.

We Gaze Continually At The World And It Grows Dull In Our Perceptions. Yet Seen From Another's Vantage Point, As If New, It May Still Take The Breath Away.

There's Been A Growing Dissatisfaction And Distrust With The Conventional Publishing Industry, In That You Tend To Have A Lot Of Formerly Reputable Imprints Now Owned By Big Conglomerates.

I Believe That Magic Is Art, And That Art, Whether That Be Music, Writing, Sculpture, Or Any Other Form, Is Literally Magic. Art Is, Like Magic, The Science Of Manipulating Symbols, Words Or Images, To Achieve Changes In Consciousness… Indeed To Cast A Spell Is Simply To Spell, To Manipulate Words, To Change Peoples Consciousness, And This Is Why I Believe That An Artist Or Writer Is The Closest Thing In The Contemporary World To A Shaman.

I Have So Very Much. I Have So Very Little.

We Have Laboured Long To Build A Heaven, Only To Find It Populated With Horrors.

Authority Allows Two Roles: The Torturer And The Tortured. Twists People Into Joyless Mannequins That Fear And Hate, While Culture Plunges Into The Abyss.

I'm A Very Smug Show-off At Heart. I'm Altogether Too Pleased With Myself. The Big Boost For Me Is To Be Able To Turn Out Something That I Think Is Pretty Marvelous, Like 'lost Girls.' I'm Not In It For Money, I'm Just In It For The Glory.

Through My Blue Fingers, Pink Grains Are Falling, Haphazard, Random, A Disorganized Stream Of Silicone That Seems Pregnant With The Possibility Of Every Conceivable Shape… But This Is Illusion. Things Have Their Shape In Time, Not Space Alone. Some Marble Blocks Have Statues Within Them, Embedded In Their Future.

I Don't Think You Can Separate A Place From Its History. I Think A Place Is Much More Than The Bricks And Mortar That Go Into Its Construction. I Think It's More Than The Accidental Topography Of The Ground It Stands On.

Bricks And Mortar

I Think That Storytelling And Creation Are Very Close To What The Center Of What Magic Is About. I Think Not Just For Me, But For Most Of The Cultures That Have Had A Concept Of Magic, Then The Manipulation Of Language, And Words, And Thus Of Stories And Fictions, Has Been Very Close To The Center Of It All.

It's All A Joke! Everything Anybody Ever Valued Or Struggled For... It's All A Monstrous, Demented Gag! So Why Can't You See The Funny Side? Why Aren't You Laughing?

Love Your Rage, Not Your Cage.

They Say That Life's A Game, & Then They Take The Board Away.

I Despise The Comic Industry, But I Will Always Love The Comic Medium.

In The Human Mind, The Number Of Possible Connections That Can Be Made Between Neurons Greatly Exceeds The Number Of Atoms In The Universe.

Never Despair. Never Surrender.

Never Surrender

Equality And Freedom Are Not Luxuries To Lightly Cast Aside. Without Them, Order Cannot Long Endure Before Approaching Depths Beyond Imagining.

I Thought As Much. Miss Murray, Though I Am A Beast, Do Not Think That I Am Stupid. I Know That I Am Hideous And Hateful. I Am Not Loved, Nor Ever Hope To Be. Nor Am I Fool Enough To Think That What I Feel For You Is Love. But In This World, Alone, I Do Not Hate You. And Alone In This World, You Do Not Hate Me.

As People Get More Desperate, History Suggests That They're Not Going To Rise In A Mighty Proletarian Tidal Wave And Wash Away Their Oppressors. They're Gonna Turn On Each Other.

Who Makes The World? Perhaps The World Is Not Made. Perhaps Nothing Is Made. Perhaps It Simply Is, Has Been, Will Always Be There…a Clock Without A Craftsman.

In A Sense, The Story, Or Poem Or Verse Or Whatever It Is You're Writing, You Can Kind Of Think Of It As A Kind Of Projectile. Imagine It Is A Kind Of Projectile Which Has Been Specially Shaped To Be Aerodynamic, And That Your Target Is The Soft Grey Putty Of The Reader's Brain.

People Have Asked Me Why I Made The First Chapter Of My First Novel So Long, And In An Invented English. The Only Answer I Can Come Up With That Satisfies Me Is, 'to Keep Out The Scum.'

I Doubt That There Are Many Screenplays Of Movies That Either Of Us Have Seen Over The Past 10 Years That Were First Drafts, Or Were The Work Of Purely One Person. In My World, The Actors And The Director Are All Made Of Paper, And They Do Exactly What I Say. I Feel Much More In Control Of The Finished Work. I Feel Like The Statement That I'm Making - Even Though It's In A Medium By No Means As Glamorous Or As Widely Recognized As Film - Is At Least The Statement That I Wanted To Make. That's A Lot More Important To Me Than The Allure Of Working For Hollywood.

I Still Can't Believe It . . . Him Comin' Here Everyday, Nobody Realizin'. Still, That's Life: Lotta Stuff Happens Under The Waterline.

Our Masters Have Not Heard The People's Voice For Generations And It Is Much, Much Louder Than They Care To Remember.

It's Only Those Exceptional And Rare Individuals Who Have Brilliant Ideas Delivered To Them By The Muse, Complete And Gift Wrapped. The Rest Of Us Have To Work At It.

It Does Not Do To Rely Too Much On Silent Majorities, Evey, For Silence Is A Fragile Thing, One Loud Noise, And Its Gone. But The People Are So Cowed And Disorganised. A Few Might Take The Opportunity To Protest, But It'll Just Be A Voice Crying In The Wilderness. Noise Is Relative To The Silence Preceding It. The More Absolute The Hush, The More Shocking The Thunderclap. Our Masters Have Not Heard The People's Voice For Generations, Evey And It Is Much, Much Louder Than They Care To Remember.

Life Is A Lot More Interesting If You Are Interested In The People And The Places Around You. So, Illuminate Your Little Patch Of Ground, The People That You Know, The Things That You Want To Commemorate. Light Them Up With Your Art, With Your Music, With Your Writing, With Whatever It Is That You Do.

Everybody Has Their Story To Tell.

You Can’t Buy That Kind Of Empowerment. To Just Know That As Far As You Are Aware, You Have Not Got A Price; That There Is Not An Amount Of Money Large Enough To Make You Compromise Even A Tiny Bit Of Principle That, As It Turned Out, Would Make No Practical Difference Anyway. I’d Advise Everyone To Do It, Otherwise You’re Going To End Up Mastered By Money And That’s Not A Thing You Want Ruling Your Life.

I Enjoy Putting My Mind Into Different Situations Rather Than My Body.

Don't Leave Home Without Your Sword - Your Intellect.

I Did It Thirty-five Minutes Ago.

The More I Look At Most Of The Art Movements, It's All Occultism, When You Get Down To It. The Surrealists Were Openly Talking About Being Magicians.

If You're Using Sex To Sell Sneakers, Then You're Not Just Selling Sneakers, You're Selling Sex As Well, And You're Contributing To The Sexual Temperature Of Society.

In An Era Of Stress And Anxiety, When The Present Seems Unstable And The Future Unlikely, The Natural Response Is To Retreat And Withdraw From Reality, Taking Recourse Either In Fantasies Of The Future Or In Modified Visions Of A Half-imagined Past.

Ideas Are Bulletproof.

I Don't Think There's Really Any Difference Between Art - Or Writing, Or Music - And Magic. And I Particularly Draw The Link Between Magic And Writing. I Think That They Are Profoundly Connected.

Do I Believe, For Example, That By Using Magic I Could Fly? No. How Would You Get Around Gravity? Impossible. Do I Believe That I Might Be Able To Project My Consciousness Into A Very, Very Vivid Simulation Of Flying? Yeah. Yes, I've Done That. Yes, That Works.

Material Existence Is Entirely Founded On A Phantom Realm Of Mind, Whose Nature And Geography Are Unexplored.

Is It Meaningless To Apologize? Never.

The Rudderless World Is Not Shaped By Vague Metaphysical Forces. It Is Not God Who Kills The Children. Not Fate That Butchers Them Or Destiny That Feeds Them To The Dogs. ... It´s Us. Only Us.

Real Life Is Messy, Inconsistent, And It's Seldom When Anything Ever Really Gets Resolved. It's Taken Me A Long Time To Realize That.

Consciousness, Unprovable By Scientific Standards, Is Forever, Then, The Impossible Phantom In The Predictable Biologic Machine, And Your Every Thought A Genuine Supernatural Event. Your Every Thought Is A Ghost, Dancing.

The World's A Stage, & Everything Else Is Vaudeville.

There's A Notion I'd Like To See Buried: The Ordinary Person. Ridiculous. There Is No Ordinary Person.

In Many Ways, My Entire Graphic Novel Career Was A Long Diversion. Originally, All I Wanted To Do Was To Be An Underground Cartoonist And Maybe Bring Out A Groovy Underground Mag.

Knowledge, Like Air, Is Vital To Life. Like Air, No One Should Be Denied It.

Truth Is A Well-known Pathological Liar. It Invariably Turns Out To Be Fiction Wearing A Fancy Frock. Self-proclaimed Fiction, On The Other Hand, Is Entirely Honest. You Can Tell This, Because It Comes Right Out And Says, "i'm A Liar," Right There On The Dust Jacket.

Remember, Remember, The Fifth Of November, The Gunpowder Treason And Plot. I Know Of No Reason Why The Gunpowder Treason Should Ever Be Forgot... But What Of The Man? I Know His Name Was Guy Fawkes And I Know, In 1605, He Attempted To Blow Up The Houses Of Parliament.

I Suppose All Fictional Characters, Especially In Adventure Or Heroic Fiction, At The End Of The Day Are Our Dreams About Ourselves. And Sometimes They Can Be Really Revealing.

Madness Is The Emergency Exit. You Can Just Step Outside, And Close The Door On All Those Dreadful Things That Happened. Forever.

Our Environments Shape The Way We See Ourselves. If You Have Been Condemned To Live In An Area That Is Pretty Evidently A Rat-run, Then Sooner Or Later You're Gonna Come To The Conclusion That You're A Rat.

War Is A Perversion Of Sex.

Famously, There's Not Really Anywhere To Go After Nihilism. It's Not Progressing Toward Anything, It's A Statement Of Outrage, However Brilliant.

I'm Not Personally Connected To The Internet, Although Nearly Everyone That I Know Is, And Many Of Them Have A Great Time And No Problems With It. And On The Surface You Can See That The Internet Could Go An Awful Long Way To Educating, Enlightening, Informing And Connecting The World.

I've Never Really Cared Much About Money. I've Got Enough To Live On. And It's Not Like I Live In A Fancy House, It's Not Like I Own A Car, And It's Not Like I Ever Go On Holiday.

I've Come To Think That The Universe Is A Four-dimensional Site In Which Nothing Is Changing And Nothing Is Moving. The Only Thing That Is Moving Along The Time Axis Is Our Consciousness. The Past Is Still There, The Future Has Always Been Here. Every Moment That Has Existed Or Will Ever Exist Is All Part Of This Giant Hyper-moment Of Space-time.

It May Be True That The Only Reason The Comic Book Industry Now Exists Is For This Purpose, To Create Characters For Movies, Board Games And Other Types Of Merchandise.

Here's The Thing: If You're Monitoring Every Single Thing That Goes On In A Given Culture, If You Have All The Information That Is There To Be Had, Then That Is The Equivalent Of Having None Of It. How Are You Going To Process That Amount Of Information?

None Of You Understand. I'm Not Locked Up In Here With You. You're Locked Up In Here With Me.

I Suppose That The Main Drive Is To Find The Edge Of Something And Then Throw Myself Over It.

They Say We Have We Created The Man To End All Wars; I Say We Have Created A Man To End All Worlds.

I'm Dependent On Writing For A Living, So Really It's To My Advantage To Understand How The Creative Process Works. One Of The Problems Is, When You Start To Do That, In Effect You're Going To Have To Step Off The Edge Of Science And Rationality.

I'd Prefer To Include Sex Scenes Alongside The Adventure Scenes And Everyday-life Scenes, As If They Were All Part Of The Same Thing. Which Of Course They Are. Sex Is Not Discrete From The Rest Of Our Existence.

If You're Functional, It Doesn't Matter If You're Mad.

My Dear, Beautiful And Imaginative Things Can Be Destroyed. Beauty And Imagination Cannot.

I Genuinely Like The People I Meet At Signings Or The Bits Of Public Talking That I Do.

If We Can Come Up With All Sorts Of Imaginative Ways In Which People Die, Then I Really Don't See What The Problem Is With Coming Up With Imaginative Ways In Which People Can Procreate.

Magic And Art Tend To Share A Lot Of The Same Language. They Both Talk About Evocation, Invocation, And Conjuring.

Technology Is Always A Two-edged Sword. It Will Bring In Many Benefits, But Also Many Disasters.

Looked At Sky Through Smoke Heavy With Human Fat And God Was Not There. The Cold, Suffocating Dark Goes On Forever And We Are Alone. Live Our Lives, Lacking Anything Better To Do. Devise Reason Later. Born From Oblivion; Bear Children, Hell-bound As Ourselves, Go Into Oblivion. There Is Nothing Else.

Yes, Of Course, The Whole Idea Is Utterly Inane, But To Let Its Predictable Inanities Blind You To Its Truly Fabulous And Breathtaking Aspects Is To Do Both Oneself And The Genre A Disservice.

My Mother Said I Broke Her Heart...but It Was My Integrity That Was Important. Is That So Selfish? It Sells For So Little, But It's All We Have Left In This Place. It Is The Very Last Inch Of Us...but Within That Inch We Are Free.

How Can Two People Hate So Much Without Knowing Each Other?

Because Our Entire Universe Is Made Up Of Consciousness, We Never Really Experience The Universe Directly We Just Experience Our Consciousness Of The Universe, Our Perception Of It, So Right, Our Only Universe Is Perception.

The Only Reality We Can Ever Truly Know Is That Of Our Perceptions, Our Own Consciousness, While That Consciousness, And Thus Our Entire Reality, Is Made Of Nothing But Signs And Symbols. Nothing But Language. Even God Requires Language Before Conceiving The Universe. See Genesis: “in The Beginning Was The Word.

Please Don't Worry. It's A Psychological Complaint, Common Amongst Ex-librarians. You See, She Thinks She's A Coffee Table Edition.

I Am Watching The Stars, Admiring Their Complex Trajectories Through Space And Time. I Am Trying To Give A Name To The Force That Set Them In Motion.

It Seems That Every Movie Is A Remake Of Something That Was Better When It Was First Released In A Foreign Language, As A 1960s Tv Show, Or Even As A Comic Book. Now You’ve Got Theme Park Rides As The Source Material Of Movies. The Only Things Left Are Breakfast Cereal Mascots. In Our Lifetime, We Will See Johnny Depp Playing Captain Crunch.

I'm Not A Particularly Dark Individual. I Have My Moments, It's True, But I Do Have A Sense Of Humor.

Culture Is Just A Shambling Zombie That Repeats What It Did In Life; Bits Of It Drop Off, And It Doesn't Appear To Notice.

As I See It, A Successful Story Of Any Kind Should Be Almost Like Hypnosis: You Fascinate The Reader With Your First Sentence, Draw Them In Further With Your Second Sentence And Have Them In A Mild Trance By The Third. Then, Being Careful Not To Wake Them, You Carry Them Away Up The Back Alley Of Your Narrative And When They Are Hopelessly Lost Within The Story, Having Surrendered Themselves To It, You Do Them Terrible Violence With A Softball Bag And Then Lead Them Whimpering To The Exit On The Last Page. Believe Me, They'll Thank You For It.

I Didn't Put You In A Prison, Evey. I Just Showed You The Bars.

Authority, When First Detecting Chaos At Its Heels, Will Entertain The Vilest Schemes To Save Its Orderly Facade.

Judged By The Stark, Sure-footed Portrait In Hard Time, Brian Azzarello And Richard Corben Clearly Have John Constantine Down, Cold And To The Life. Azzarellos Grasp Of Pacing, Character And Situation Resonates Through Every Scene With A Black Crystal Clarity Thats Short Of Masterful, While Corben Contributes What Is, Perhaps, One Of The Most Darkly Expressive Pieces In A Long, Already-legendary Career.

Janey Accuses Me Of Chasing Jailbait. She Bursts Into Angry Tears, Asking If It's Because She's Getting Older. It's True. She's Aging More Noticeably Every Day — While I Am Standing Still. I Prefer The Stillness Here. I Am Tired Of Earth. These People. I Am Tired Of Being Caught In The Tangle Of Their Lives.

Artists Use Lies To Tell The Truth. Yes, I Created A Lie. But Because You Believed It, You Found Something True About Yourself.

If The Audience Knew What They Wanted Then They Wouldn't Be The Audience, They Would Be The Artist.

In Order To Be Able To Make It, You Have To Put Aside The Fear Of Failing And The Desire Of Succeeding. You Have To Do These Things Completely And Purely Without Fear, Without Desire. Because Things That We Do Without Lust Of Result Are The Purest Actions We Shall Ever Take.

On The One Occasion Where I Did Try Writing A Screenplay, I Found The Rewriting Just Unendurable.

In Countries Like The U.s. And Great Britain, We Exist In A Wholly Sexualized Culture, Where Everything From Cars To Snack Food Are Sold With A Healthy Slathering Of Sex To Make Them More Commercially Appealing.

I Don't Really Have Any Great Interest In Writing For Movies. Comics, To Me, Is A Much More Promising Field. There's Still A Lot Of Ground To Be Broken In Comics, Whereas Movies, To A Degree... I Don't Know. They're A Wonderful Art Form, But They're Not My Favorite Art Form. They Might Not Even Be In The Top Five Of My Favorite Art Forms.

As I See It, Part Of The Art Of Being A Hero Is Knowing When You Don't Need To Be One Anymore.

I'm Remote From Most Technology To The Point That I'm Kind Of Amish.

There Is No Future. There Is No Past. Do You See? Time Is Simultaneous, An Intricately Structured Jewel That Humans Insist On Viewing One Edge At A Time, When The Whole Design Is Visible In Every Facet.

I'm Disappointed In You, Adrian. I'm Very Disappointed. Reassembling Myself Was The First Trick I Learned. It Didn't Kill Osterman. Did You Really Think It Would Kill Me? I Have Walked Across The Surface Of The Sun. I Have Witnessed Events So Tiny And So Fast, They Could Hardly Be Said To Have Occurred At All. But You, Adrian, You're Just A Man. The World's Smartest Man Poses No More Threat To Me Than Does Its Smartest Termite.

I Should Just Keep Me Mouth Shut, I Just Upset People.

I Think If You Were To Sever The Connection Between Arousal And Shame, You Might Actually Come Up With Something Liberating And Socially Useful. It Might Be Healthier For Us, And Lead To A Situation Such As They Enjoy In Holland, Denmark, Or Spain, Where They Have Pornography All Over The Place - Quite Hardcore Pornography - But They Do Not Have Anywhere The Incidence Of Sex Crimes.

All Culture Must Have Arisen From Cult.

It Is Not The Job Of Artists To Give The Audience What The Audience Want. If The Audience Knew What They Needed, Then They Wouldn’t Be The Audience. They Would Be The Artist. It Is The Job Of Artists To Give The Audience What They Need

It's Cold And It's Mean Spirited And I Don't Like It Here Anymore.

I Increasingly Fear That Nothing Good Can Come Of Almost Any Adaptation, And Obviously That's Sweeping. There Are A Couple Of Adaptations That Are Perhaps As Good Or Better Than The Original Work. But The Vast Majority Of Them Are Pointless.

For Whatever The Future Holds, One Thing Is Certain... It Just Won't Be The Same.

Now Everything Is Wonderful And Hazardous And Nothing's Hypothetical.

The Conservative Party Is A Religion In That They Are Bound Together By Belief. Almost Any Organization Has Its Religious Aspects.

I Wouldn’t Be The Person I Am Today If It Wasn’t For The Opportunities The Library Gave Me.

Art Is, Like Magic, The Science Of Manipulating Symbols, Words Or Images To Achieve Changes In Consciousness

Roses Are Red Violets Are Blue Everything's Possible Nothing Is True.

You Wear A Mask For So Long, You Forget Who You Were Beneath It.

If You Look At That Incredible Burst Of Fantastic Characters That Emerged In The Late 19th Century/early 20th Century, You Can See So Many Of The Fears And Hopes Of Those Times Embedded In Those Characters. Even In Throwaway Bits Of Contemporary Culture You Can Often Find Some Penetrating Insights Into The Real World Around Us.

My Only Problem With Fans Is When They Turn Pro. For Example, When All The Professional Writers Were Fired By Dc In The '60s, They Brought In A Generation Of Comic Book Fans Who Would Have Paid To Have Written These Stories.

It Wasn't So Much All The Sex That Robbed Me Of My Moral Bearings, But All The Narcotics. I Must Say, There's Something About Opium That Goes Very Well With Lesbianism.

The Comics Medium Has Some Unusual Features That Do Make It Very Different, In That It's Combining A Verbal Narrative With A Visual One That Allows For Much Richer Possibilities Of Transmitting Information.

The Things We Do Without The Fear Of Failure And The Desire For Success Are The Purest Acts We'll Ever Do

Desire For Success

Fear Of Failure

Every Film Is A Remake Of A Previous Film, Or A Remake Of A Television Series That Everyone Loved In The 1960s, Or A Remake Of A Television Series That Everyone Hated In The 1960s. Or It's A Theme Park Ride; It Will Soon Come To Breakfast Cereal Mascots.

This Is An Imaginary Story...aren't They All?

I Live My Life Free Of Compromise, And Step Into The Shadows Without Complaint Or Regret.

I Leave The Human Cockroaches To Discuss Their Heroin And Child Pornography.

If Light Is Outlawed, Then Only Outlaws Will Be Able To See Where They're Going.

I Didn't Really Sign Up To Be A Celebrity, I Only Signed Up To Be A Writer.

For Me, There Is Very Little Difference Between Magic And Art. To Me, The Ultimate Act Of Magic Is To Create Something From Nothing: It's Like When The Stage Magician Pulls The Rabbit From The Hat.

The Dusk Reeks Of Fornication And Bad Consciences.

There's No Such Thing As Quitting. Just Sometimes There's A Longer Pause Between Relapses.

On My Fortieth Birthday, Rather Than Merely Bore My Friends By Having Anything As Mundane As A Midlife Crisis I Decided It Might Be More Interesting To Actually Terrify Them By Going Completely Mad And Declaring Myself To Be A Magician.

Love Doesn't Have A Point. Love Is The Point.

But What I Hope Most Of All Is That You Understand What I Mean When I Tell You That Even Though I Do Not Know You, And Even Though I May Never Meet You, Laugh With You, Cry With You, Or Kiss You. I Love You. With All My Heart, I Love You.

I've Never Studied Anything Formally. I Was Excluded From School At The Age Of 17, So I Am An Autodidact, Which Is A Word That I Have Taught Myself.

Noise Is Relative To The Silence Preceeding It. The More Absolute The Hush, The More Shocking The Thunderclap. Our Masters Have Not Heard The Peoples Voice For Generations, Evey And It Is Much, Much Louder Than They Care To Remember.

If We Loved Steve Aylett, Really Loved Him In The Way That He Deserves, A Selfless Love That Genuinely Wanted Nothing Save His Happiness And Comfort, We'd Lobotomise Him.

When I Hear Alcoholics Talk About Having Their Demons, I Think That They're Probably Absolutely Literally Correct.

Certainly, My Many Years Working In The Comics Industry, Creating Products That I Do Not Own, Has Made Me Rather Fierce On The Subject Of Giving Up Rights.

Rorschach: Used To Come Here Often, Back When We Were Partners. Dreiberg: Oh. Uh, Yeah... Yeah, Those Were Great Times, Rorschach. Great Times. Whatever Happened To Them? Rorschach: [exiting] You Quit.

I've Always Wanted To Explore Characters Of All Races, All Genders, All Ages. It Just Seems To Me To Be A Natural Way To Approach Any Kind Of Storytelling.

Evey Hammond: Who Are You? V: Who? Who Is But The Form Following The Function Of What And What I Am Is A Man In A Mask. Evey Hammond: Well I Can See That. V: Of Course You Can. I'm Not Questioning Your Powers Of Observation I'm Merely Remarking Upon The Paradox Of Asking A Masked Man Who He Is

And Yet, In Each Human Coupling, A Thousand Million Sperm Vie For A Single Egg. Multiply Those Odds By Countless Generations, Against The Odds Of Your Ancestors Being Alive; Meeting; Siring This Precise Son; That Exact Daughter... Until Your Mother Loves A Man She Has Every Reason To Hate, And Of That Union, Of The Thousand Million Children Competing For Fertilization, It Was You, Only You, That Emerged. To Distill So Specific A Form From That Chaos Of Improbability, Like Turning Air To Gold... That Is The Crowning Unlikelihood. The Thermodynamic Miracle.

I Am But A Stranger ... As We All Are. Lonely Inside Our Separate Skins, We Cannot Know Each Others Pain And Must Bear Our Own In Solitude. For My Part, I Have Found That Walking Soothes It; And That, Given Luck, Sometimes We Find One To Walk Besides Us ... At Least For A Little Way.

I'm Very Pessimistic About Adaptations From One Medium To Another. I've Got A Very Kind Of Primitive, Puritan View Of It. I Tend To Think That If Something Was Derived For One Medium, Then There's No Real Immediate Reason To Think That It's Necessarily Going To Be As Good Or Better If Adapted Into Another One. There Have Been Very Good Stage Plays That Have Made Some Very Good Films. But There Are Not So Many Differences Between The Theater And The Cinema As There Are Between The Cinema And, Say, Reading A Book Or Reading A Comic.

A Live Body And A Dead Body Contain The Same Number Of Particles. Structurally, There's No Discernible Difference. Life And Death Are Unquantifiable Abstracts. Why Should I Be Concerned?

The One Thing With Writing Stories About The Rise Of Fascism Is That If You Wait Long Enough, You'll Almost Certainly Be Proved Right. Fascism Is Like A Hydra - You Can Cut Off Its Head In The Germany Of The '30s And '40s, But It'll Still Turn Up On Your Back Doorstep In A Slightly Altered Guise.

I Don’t Distinguish Between Magic And Art. When I Got Into Magic, I Realised I Had Been Doing It All Along, Ever Since I Wrote My First Pathetic Story Or Poem When I Was Twelve Or Whatever. This Has All Been My Magic, My Way Of Dealing With It.

I Think That We Need Mythology. We Need A Bedrock Of Story And Legend In Order To Live Our Lives Coherently.

Right From The Outset, The Prevailing Mindset In British Comics Fandom Was A Radical And Progressive One. We Were All Proto-hippies, And We All Thought That Comics Would Be Greatly Improved If Everything Was A Bit Psychedelic Like Jim Steranko.

Way Back In The Day, When I First Started And Had Delusions Of Adequacy As A Cartoonist, I Would Listen To Music. When I Switched To A Career As A Writer, I Would Try To Listen To Music, But If The Songs Had Lyrics They Would Get In The Way Of The Words I Was Trying To Write. So I Switched To Listening To Purely Instrumental Pieces.

So When You Find Yourself Locked Onto An Unpleasant Train Of Thought, Heading For The Places In Your Past Where The Screaming Is Unbearable, Remember There's Always Madness. Madness Is The Emergency Exit.

Train Of Thought

Finding Yourself

I've Never Watched Any Of The Adaptations Of My Books. I've Never Wanted To, And There's Absolutely No Chance Of Me Doing So In The Future.

There Is An Inverse Relationship Between Imagination And Money.

Anarchy Wears Two Faces, Both Creator And Destroyer. Thus Destroyers Topple Empires; Make A Canvas Of Clean Rubble Where Creators Can Then Build A Better World. Rubble, Once Achieved Makes Further Ruins' Means Irrelevant. Away With Our Explosives, Then! Away With Our Destroyers! They Have No Place Within Our Better World. But Let Us Raise A Toast To All Our Bombers, All Our Bastards, Most Unlovely And Most Unforgivable, Let's Drink Their Health, Then Meet With Them No More.

I Sat On The Bed. I Looked At The Rorschach Blot. I Tried To Make It Look Like A Spreading Tree, Shadows Pooled Beneath It, But It Didn't. It Looked More Like A Dead Cat I Once Found, The Fat, Glistening Grubs Writhing Blindly, Squirming Over Each Other, Frantically Tunneling Away From The Light. But Even That Isn't The Real Horror. The Horror Is This: In The End, It Is Simply A Picture Of Empty Meaningless Blackness.

I Don’t Think People Realise How Vital Libraries Are Or What A Colossal Danger It Would Be If We Were To Lose Any More. Having Had A Truncated School Life Myself, All Of My Education From The Age Of 17 Has Been Self-taught. I Wouldn’t Be The Person I Am Today If It Wasn’t For The Opportunities The Library Gave Me.

I Think That In An Increasingly Virtual World, Lovingly Produced Artefacts Are At A Premium.

With So Much Chaos, Someone Will Do Something Stupid. And When They Do, Things Will Turn Nasty.

The Only Real Reason That I'd Have For Working For Hollywood Is The Fantastic Amounts Of Money Involved, And That Isn't Enough Of An Incentive To Really Give Up The Degree Of Control That I Have Over My Work At The Moment With Comics. I Suppose That's Probably Why I Don't Have Any Designs On Being A Screenwriter.

I Really Can't Be Bothered Going To A Barber. And Shaving Every Morning, That's Nightmarish. I Spent My Teenage Years Covered In Tiny Little Bits Of Toilet Paper.

What Does Fighting Crime Mean, Exactly? Does It Mean Upholding The Law When A Woman Shoplifts To Feed Her Children, Or Does It Mean Struggling To Uncover The Ones Who, Quite Legally, Have Brought About Her Poverty?

A Lot Of People Have Found The Idea Of Living Your Life Over And Over Again Absolutely Terrifying; There's Some People That Find It Very Comforting. There Are Others That Are Appalled By It.

The Here-and-now Demands Attention, Is More Present To Us. We Dismiss The Inner World Of Our Ideas As Less Important, Although Most Of Our Immediate Physical Reality Originated Only In The Mind. The Tv, Sofa, Clock And Room, The Whole Civilisation That Contains Them Once Were Nothing Save Ideas.

There Is Some Confusion As To What Magic Actually Is. I Think This Can Be Cleared Up If You Just Look At The Very Earliest Descriptions Of Magic. Magic In Its Earliest Form Is Often Referred To As “the Art”. I Believe This Is Completely Literal. I Believe That Magic Is Art And That Art, Whether It Be Writing, Music, Sculpture, Or Any Other Form Is Literally Magic.

I Think I'm A Bit Like A Kind Of Shark, That If I Stop Swimming, I Won't Be Able To Breathe, Something Like That.

Please! Don't All Leave. Somebody Has To Do It, Don't You See? Somebody Has To Save The World.

It's Early Days. A Few Skeletons Are Bound To Keep Jumping Out Of The Closet.

There Is No Substitute For Practical Experience, And If You Want To Write About People You Ought To Put Down That Comic Book And Go Out And Meet Some Of Them Rather Than Studying The Way That Stan Lee Or Chris Claremont Depict People.

The Magician To Some Degree Is Trying To Drive Him Or Herself Mad In A Controlled Setting, Within Controlled Laws.

The Superman Exists And He's American.

There's No Flesh Or Blood Within This Cloak To Kill. There's Only An Idea. Ideas Are Bulletproof.

Once You Realize What A Joke Everything Is, Being The Comedian Is The Only Thing That Makes Sense.

There Is No Coincidence. Only The Illusion Of Coincidence.

It Seems Strange That My Life Should End In Such A Terrible Place, But For Three Years I Had Roses, And Apologized To No One.

I Try To Do Things In Comics That Cannot Be Repeated By Television, By Movies, By Interactive Entertainment.

Growing Up In The Boroughs, I Thought I Must Be The Cleverest Boy In The World, An Illusion That I Was Able To Maintain Until I Got To The Grammar School.

London Has Been Used As The Emblematic English City, But It's Far From Representative Of What Life In England Is Actually About.

Magic Is A State Of Mind. It Is Often Portrayed As Very Black And Gothic, And That Is Because Certain Practitioners Played That Up For A Sense Of Power And Prestige. That Is A Disservice. Magic Is Very Colorful. Of This, I Am Sure.

Blake Understood. Treated It Like A Joke, But He Understood. He Saw The Cracks In Society, Saw The Little Men In Masks Trying To Hold It Together...he Saw The True Face Of The Twentieth Century And Chose To Become A Reflection Of It, A Parody Of It. No One Else Saw The Joke. That's Why He Was Lonely.

The Ending Is Nearer Than You Think, And It Is Already Written. All That We Have Left To Choose Is The Correct Moment To Begin.

I'm Not A Very Shy Person. I'm Just Somebody Who's Got A Lot Of Work And Who Doesn't Like To Parade Himself In New Celebrity Contexts.

Everything You've Ever Read Of Mine Is First-draft. This Is One Of The Peculiarities Of The Comics Field. By The Time You're Working On Chapter Three Of Your Masterwork, Chapter One Is Already In Print. You Can't Go Back And Suddenly Decide To Make This Character A Woman, Or Have This One Fall Out Of A Window.

The Roots Of The Word 'anarchy' Are 'an Archos,' 'no Leaders,' Which Is Not Really About The Kind Of Chaos That Most People Imagine When The Word 'anarchy' Is Mentioned. I Think That Anarchy Is, To The Contrary, About Taking Personal Responsibility For Yourself.

Romantic Poetry Had Its Heyday When People Like Lord Byron Were Kicking It Large. But You Try And Make A Living As A Poet Today, And You'll Find It's Very Different!

Nothing Is Insoluble. Nothing Is Hopeless. Not While There's Life.

If I Have To Have A Past, Then I Prefer It To Be Multiple Choice.

Multiple Choice

Please, Don't Go. It's Lonely. There's A Hole In My Head As Big As The World And It's So Very Lonely.

There Has Been A Rather Unpleasant Sensibility Apparent In Frank Miller's Work For Quite A Long Time.

Who? Who Is But The Form Following The Function Of What, And What I Am Is A Man In A Mask.

I Felt, If I'm Going To React I Might As Well Over React.

The Entire Universe - For One Thing - Only Exists In Your Perceptions. That's All You're Gonna See Of It. To All Practical Intents And Purposes This Is Purely Some Kind Of Lightshow That's Being Put On In The Kind Of Neurons In Our Brain. The Whole Of Reality.

It Is The Oldest Ironies That Are Still The Most Satisfying: Man, When Preparing For Bloody War, Will Orate Loudly And Most Eloquently In The Name Of Peace.

A World Grows Up Around Me. Am I Shaping It, Or Do Its Predetermined Contours Guide My Hand?

This City Is Dying Of Rabies. Is The Best I Can Do To Wipe Random Flecks Of Foam From Its Lips?

It's Funny, But Certain Faces Seem To Go In And Out Of Style. You Look At Old Photographs And Everybody Has A Certain Look To Them, Almost As If They're Related. Look At Pictures From Ten Years Later And You Can See That There's A New Kind Of Face Starting To Predominate, And That The Old Faces Are Fading Away And Vanishing, Never To Be Seen Again.

To Some Degree Satanism Is Purely A Kind Of Disease Of Christianity. You've Got To Really Be Christian To Believe In Satan.

The One Place Gods Inarguably Exist Is In The Human Mind.

...my Point Is, I Went Crazy. When I Saw What A Black, Awful Joke The World Was. I Went Crazy As A Coot! I Admit It! Why Can't You?

You've Got To Be Able To Pay Your Bills, Otherwise You're Not Going To Sleep At Night. But Beyond That, The World Inside My Head Has Always Been A Far Richer Place Than The World Outside It. I Suppose That A Lot Of My Art And Writing Are Meant To Bring The Two Together.

I Don't Think Any Of Us Grew Up Into The World We Were Hoping For Or Expecting.

All We Ever See Of Stars Are Their Old Photographs.

Old Photographs

Nothing Ends, Adrian. Nothing Ever Ends.

Sexually Progressive Cultures Gave Us Literature, Philosophy, Civilization And The Rest, While Sexually Restrictive Cultures Gave Us The Dark Ages And The Holocaust.

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