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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.
-Alan Moore
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If We Can Come

Alan Moore
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.
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Topic
Crazy
People
Mad
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Rather Than Being Able To Have A Healthy Relationship With Our Own Sexual Imagination, We're Driven Into Some Dark Corners By Shame And Embarrassment And Guilt, And Those Dark Corners Breed All Sorts Of Monsters.
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Most Of The People Who Get Sent To Die In Wars Are Young Men Who've Got A Lot Of Energy And Would Probably Rather, In A Better World, Be Putting That Energy Into Copulation Rather Than Going Over There And Blowing Some Other Young Man's Guts Out.
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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?
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A World Grows Up Around Me. Am I Shaping It, Or Do Its Predetermined Contours Guide My Hand?
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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.
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Lsd Was An Incredible Experience. Not That I’m Recommending It For Anybody Else; But For Me It Kind Of – It Hammered Home To Me That Reality Was Not A Fixed Thing. That The Reality That We Saw About Us Every Day Was One Reality, And A Valid One – But That There Were Others, Different Perspectives Where Different Things Have Meaning That Were Just As Valid. That Had A Profound Effect On Me.
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I Wouldn’t Be The Person I Am Today If It Wasn’t For The Opportunities The Library Gave Me.
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When I Hear Alcoholics Talk About Having Their Demons, I Think That They're Probably Absolutely Literally Correct.
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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.
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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.
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I've No Objection To The Term 'graphic Novel,' As Long As What It Is Talking About Is Actually Some Sort Of Graphic Work That Could Conceivably Be Described As A Novel. My Main Objection To The Term Is That Usually It Means A Collection Of Six Issues Of Spider-man, Or Something That Does Not Have The Structure Or Any Of The Qualities Of A Novel, But Is Perhaps Roughly The Same Size.
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The Past Can't Hurt You Anymore. Not Unless You Let It. They Made You Into A Victim, Evey. They Made You Into A Statistic. But, That's Not The Real You. That's Not Who You Are Inside.
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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.
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All It Takes Is One Bad Day To Reduce The Sanest Man Alive To Lunacy. That's How Far The World Is From Where I Am. Just One Bad Day.
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Of Course, Marxism Is An Example Of What Carl Popper Would Have Called A 'world Three' Structure, In That It's Got Immense Power As An Idea, But You Couldn't Actually Hold Up Anything In The World And Say: 'this Is Marxism'.
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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.
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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.
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I Leave The Human Cockroaches To Discuss Their Heroin And Child Pornography.
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I Think That In An Increasingly Virtual World, Lovingly Produced Artefacts Are At A Premium.
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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.
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If Light Is Outlawed, Then Only Outlaws Will Be Able To See Where They're Going.
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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.
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Equality And Freedom Are Not Luxuries To Lightly Cast Aside. Without Them, Order Cannot Long Endure Before Approaching Depths Beyond Imagining.
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As I Come To Understand Vietnam And What It Implies About The Human Condition, I Also Realize That Few Humans Will Permit Themselves Such An Understanding.
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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.
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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.
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They Say We Have We Created The Man To End All Wars; I Say We Have Created A Man To End All Worlds.
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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.
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People
Mad
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?
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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.
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I Am Brother To Dragons, And Companion To Owls. My Skin Is Black Upon Me, And My Bones Are Burned With Heat.
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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.
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All Culture Must Have Arisen From Cult.
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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.
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The Superman Exists And He's American.
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.
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I Shall Die Here. Every Last Inch Of Me Shall Perish. Except One. An Inch. It's Small And It's Fragile And It's The Only Thing In The World Worth Having. We Must Never Lose It, Or Sell It, Or Give It Away. We Must Never Let Them Take It From Us.
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People Shouldn't Be Afraid Of Their Government. Governments Should Be Afraid Of Their People.
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Yes, There Is A Conspiracy, In Fact There Are A Great Number Of Conspiracies That Are All Tripping Each Other Up. And All Of Those Conspiracies Are Run By Paranoid Fantasists And Ham-fisted Clowns. If You Are On A List Targeted By The Cia, You Really Have Nothing To Worry About. If However, You Have A Name Similar To Somebody On A List Targeted By The Cia, Then You Are Dead.
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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.
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Truly, Whoever We Are, Wherever We Reside, We Exist Upon The Whim Of Murderers.
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Sexually Progressive Cultures Gave Us Literature, Philosophy, Civilization And The Rest, While Sexually Restrictive Cultures Gave Us The Dark Ages And The Holocaust.
Sex
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To Paint Comic Books As Childish And Illiterate Is Lazy. A Lot Of Comic Books Are Very Literate - Unlike Most Films.
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Film
I Live My Life Free Of Compromise, And Step Into The Shadows Without Complaint Or Regret.
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Shadow
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Once A Man Has Seen Society's Black Underbelly, He Can Never Turn His Back On It. Never Pretend, Like You Do, That It Doesn't Exist.
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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.
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The Past Can't Hurt You Anymore, Not Unless You Let It.
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Hurt
Past
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.
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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.
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Three
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.
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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.
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Style
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If The Audience Knew What They Wanted Then They Wouldn't Be The Audience, They Would Be The Artist.
Artist
Would Be
Wanted
If You Give Me A Typewriter And I'm Having A Good Day, I Can Write A Scene That Will Astonish Its Readers. That Will Perhaps Make Them Laugh, Perhaps Make Them Cry - That Will Have Some Emotional Clout To It. It Doesn't Cost Much To Do That.
Writing
Good Day
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With Science, Ideas Can Germinate Within A Bed Of Theory, Form, And Practice That Assists Their Growth... But We As Gardeners, Must Beware... For Some Seeds Are The Seeds Of Ruin... And The Most Iridescent Blooms Are Often The Most Dangerous
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Ideas
Growth
There Has Been A Rather Unpleasant Sensibility Apparent In Frank Miller's Work For Quite A Long Time.
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Frank
Has Beens
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Hero
Knowing
Our Consciousness, A Startling Outgrowth Of The Universe, Is Possibly Its Most Important Part, The Fraction Of Existence That Can Think, Feel, Marvel At Itself.
Thinking
Important
Consciousness
I Love Films That Are Made With Almost No Budget.
Film
Made
Budgets
Remember, Remember The Fifth Of November Of Gunpowder Treason And Plot. I Know Of No Reason Why The Gun Powder Treason Should Ever Be Forgot.
Gun
Plot
Reason Why
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.
Character
Race
Age
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.
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Writing
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.
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Sneakers
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I Don't Think Any Of Us Grew Up Into The World We Were Hoping For Or Expecting.
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Expecting
I Should Just Keep Me Mouth Shut, I Just Upset People.
People
Upset
Mouths
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.
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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.
Lonely
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Men
Perhaps This Is The Purpose Of All Art, All Writing, On The Murders, Fiction And Non-fiction: Simply To Participate.
Art
Writing
Purpose
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.
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Quitting
Authority, When First Detecting Chaos At Its Heels, Will Entertain The Vilest Schemes To Save Its Orderly Facade.
Firsts
Chaos
Authority
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.
Art
Believe
Writing
Authority Allows Two Roles: The Torturer And The Tortured. Twists People Into Joyless Mannequins That Fear And Hate, While Culture Plunges Into The Abyss.
Hate
Two
People
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.
Zombie
Culture
Repeats
My Dear, Beautiful And Imaginative Things Can Be Destroyed. Beauty And Imagination Cannot.
Beautiful
Imagination
Dear
Technology Is Always A Two-edged Sword. It Will Bring In Many Benefits, But Also Many Disasters.
Technology
Two
Benefits
A Lot Of The Critique Of Our Growing Mechanization Was Actually At Its Strongest, And Arguably At Its Most Perceptive, During The Late '60s.
Growing
Late
Critique
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.
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Book
Reading
The Conservative Party Is A Religion In That They Are Bound Together By Belief. Almost Any Organization Has Its Religious Aspects.
Religious
Party
Organization
Who? Who Is But The Form Following The Function Of What, And What I Am Is A Man In A Mask.
Men
Mask
Form
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.
Song
Writing
Careers
There's No Flesh Or Blood Within This Cloak To Kill. There's Only An Idea. Ideas Are Bulletproof.
Blood
Ideas
Flesh
There Are People. There Are Stories. The People Think They Shape The Stories, But The Reverse If Often Closer To The Truth. Stories Shape The World. They Exist Independently Of People, And In Places Quite Devoid Of Man, There May Yet Be Mythologies.
Men
Thinking
People
The Things We Do Without The Fear Of Failure And The Desire For Success Are The Purest Acts We'll Ever Do
Desire
Desire For Success
Fear Of Failure
I Am Not Saying People Should Not Be Free To Join Whichever Reason They Choose But Should We Be Forced To Live Our Lives Around A Belief System That Originated Somewhere Around The Fourth Or Fifth Century Bc. I Cannot See Any More Reason To Base A Belief System Around Christianity, Judaism Or Islam Than I Can Around Lord Of The Rings.
People
Islam
Belief
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.
Reality
Perception
Language
We Have Laboured Long To Build A Heaven, Only To Find It Populated With Horrors.
Long
Heaven
Horror
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.
Swimming
Thinking
Sharks
That Pompous Phrase (graphic Novel) Was Thought Up By Some Idiot In The Marketing Department Of Dc. I Prefer To Call Them Big Expensive Comics.
Marketing
Phrases
Idiot
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.
Thinking
Bricks And Mortar
Topography
I Enjoy Putting My Mind Into Different Situations Rather Than My Body.
Mind
Different
Body
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.
Past
Jewels
Design
Look At Him Now, Poor Fellow. That's What A Dose Of Reality Does For You...never Touch The Stuff Myself, You Understand. Find It Gets In The Way Of The Hallucinations.
Reality
Doe
Looks
Love Doesn't Have A Point. Love Is The Point.
Love Is
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.
Peace
War
Men
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.
Morning
Teenage
Years
There... Poor Little Things. You See Them? Standing With Their Numbers On Their Blank, Indifferent Faces, Nuremberg In Miniature, The Ranks Of Painted Wooden Men... Poor Dominoes. Your Pretty Empire Took So Long To Build, Now, With A Snap Of History's Fingers Down It Goes.
Men
Numbers
Long
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.
Thinking
Magic
Culture
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.
Holiday
Car
House
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.
School
Age
Taught
In Comics The Reader Is In Complete Control Of The Experience. They Can Read It At Their Own Pace, And If There's A Piece Of Dialogue That Seems To Echo Something A Few Pages Back, They Can Flip Back And Check It Out, Whereas The Audience For A Film Is Being Dragged Through The Experience At The Speed Of 24 Frames Per Second.
Echoes
Pace
Pieces
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.
Book
Character
Games
There's A Notion I'd Like To See Buried: The Ordinary Person. Ridiculous. There Is No Ordinary Person.
Ordinary
Ridiculous
Buried
When I Was Working Upon The Abc Books, I Wanted To Show Different Ways That Mainstream Comics Could Viably Have Gone, That They Didn't Have To Follow 'watchmen' And The Other 1980s Books Down This Relentlessly Dark Route. It Was Never My Intention To Start A Trend For Darkness. I'm Not A Particularly Dark Individual.
Book
Dark
Different
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.
Real
Cat
Light
I Try To Do Things In Comics That Cannot Be Repeated By Television, By Movies, By Interactive Entertainment.
Trying
Television
Entertainment
The One Place Gods Inarguably Exist Is In The Human Mind.
God
Mind
Humans
With So Much Chaos, Someone Will Do Something Stupid. And When They Do, Things Will Turn Nasty.
Stupid
Nasty
Chaos
There's A Widespread Cultural Barrenness Across Art And Political Culture. But There Are Some Pockets Of Resistance On The Extreme Margins, Like The Techno-savvy Protest Movements, Small Press, The Creator-owned Comics, That Seem To Be Getting Some Signs Of Hope For The Future.
Art
Political
Pockets
I Despise The Comic Industry, But I Will Always Love The Comic Medium.
Comic
Despise
Mediums
It Doesn't Do You Any Service To Demonize Any Group Of People. It's Much Better To Try And Understand From The Inside.
People
Trying
Groups
When The Persecution Of An Individual Who Has Exposed An Evil Is Pursued So Ruthlessly And Yet The Evil Itself Is Studiedly Ignored, All Of Us Know That There Is Something Very Wrong With The Way That Our Society Is Conducting Itself. And If We Do Not Protest In The Strongest Terms About What Is Being Done In Our Name, Then We Become Complicit.
Names
Evil
Done
You Wear A Mask For So Long, You Forget Who You Were Beneath It.
Honesty
Long
Wearing A Mask
Knowledge, Like Air, Is Vital To Life. Like Air, No One Should Be Denied It.
Air
Should
Vendetta
This Is An Imaginary Story...aren't They All?
Stories
Imaginary
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.
Growing Up
School
Boys
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?
Dc Comics
Laughing
Sides
Ideas Are Bulletproof.
Change
Ideas
Bulletproof
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.
Mean
Two
Bombers
You See, There's The Way Things Seemed And Then There's The Way Things Were And One Is So Often The Total Reverse Of The Other.
Way
Reverse
There Is An Inverse Relationship Between Imagination And Money.
Imagination
Inverse
I Didn't Put You In A Prison, Evey. I Just Showed You The Bars.
Bars
Prison
Vendetta
Art Is, Like Magic, The Science Of Manipulating Symbols, Words Or Images To Achieve Changes In Consciousness
Art
Magic
Consciousness
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.
Fall
Character
Three
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.
Stars
Names
Space
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.
Art
Talking
Movement
They Say That Life's A Game, & Then They Take The Board Away.
Games
Boards
Vendetta
The Cold, Suffocating Dark Goes On Forever And We Are Alone. Live Our Lives, Lacking Anything Better To Do. Devise Reason Later.
Reason
Event Horizon
Lacking
If You're Going To Have Any Kind Of Political Opposition In The 21st Century, Then It Has To Be As Fundamentally Liquid As The Rapidly Changing Society We're Living In.
Political
Liquid
Kind
I Think That We Need Mythology. We Need A Bedrock Of Story And Legend In Order To Live Our Lives Coherently.
Thinking
Order
Needs
All We Ever See Of Stars Are Their Old Photographs.
Stars
Photograph
Old Photographs
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.
Ideas
Fabulous
Breathtaking
I'm Remote From Most Technology To The Point That I'm Kind Of Amish.
Technology
Amish
Kind
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.
Real
Taken
Long
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.
Growing
Bigs
Distrust
Never Despair. Never Surrender.
Despair
Surrender
Never Surrender
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.
Differences
Empowerment
Principles
Who Imprisoned Me Here? Who Keeps Me Here? Who Can Release Me? Who's Controlling And Constraining My Life Except...me?
Release
Love Your Rage, Not Your Cage.
Cages
Rage
Vendetta
I've Had Years Of Bizarre Hallucinogenic Magical Experiences In Which I Believed I Had Communicated With Entities That May Well Have Been Disassociated Parts Of My Own Personality Or Conceivably Some Independent Entity Of A Metaphysical Nature. Both Would Seem Equally Interesting.
Independent
Years
Interesting
I Suppose That The Main Drive Is To Find The Edge Of Something And Then Throw Myself Over It.
Over It
Edges
No. Not Even In The Face Of Armageddon. Never Compromise.
Comic Art
Rorschach
Faces
I'm 65 Years Old. Everyday The Future Looks A Little Bit Darker. But The Past, Even The Grimy Parts Of It, Well, It Just Keeps On Getting Brighter All The Time.
Past
Years
Everyday
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.
Softball
Believe
Successful
You Know What I Wish? I Wish All The Scum Of The Earth Had One Throat And I Had My Hands About It.
Hands
Scum Of The Earth
Wish
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.
Dog
Children
Fate
Don't Leave Home Without Your Sword - Your Intellect.
Home
Intellect
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.
Dream
Adventure
Character
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.
Liars
Self
Dust
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.
Shy
Parades
Persons
There Are Two Worlds We Live In: A Material World, Bound By The Laws Of Physics, And The World Inside Our Mind, Which Is Just As Important.
Law
Two
Mind
I Think That The Occupy Movement Is, In One Sense, The Public Saying That They Should Be The Ones To Decide Who's Too Big To Fail.
Thinking
Occupy Movement
Failing
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.
Lonely
Pain
Solitude
To Some Degree Satanism Is Purely A Kind Of Disease Of Christianity. You've Got To Really Be Christian To Believe In Satan.
Christian
Believe
Degrees
Language Comes First. It's Not That Language Grows Out Of Consciousness, If You Haven't Got Language, You Can't Be Conscious.
Firsts
Language
Consciousness
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.
Real
Character
Culture
The Main Thing That I Learned About Conspiracy Theory, Is That Conspiracy Theorists Believe In A Conspiracy Because That Is More Comforting. The Truth Of The World Is That It Is Actually Chaotic. The Truth Is That It Is Not The Iluminati, Or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, Or The Gray Alien Theory. The Truth Is Far More Frightening - Nobody Is In Control. The World Is Rudderless.
Believe
Comforting
Banking
I Have So Very Much. I Have So Very Little.
Littles
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.
Moving
Past
Thinking
Nothing's That Simple, Not Even Things That Are Simply Awful.
Simple
Awful
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.
Art
Differences
Magic
I Didn't Really Sign Up To Be A Celebrity, I Only Signed Up To Be A Writer.
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.
Mad
Interesting
Midlife
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.
Daughter
Mother
Children
Nothing Ends, Adrian. Nothing Ever Ends.
Ends
Happiness Is The Most Insidious Prison Of All.
Prison
Insidious
Vendetta
One Of The Advantages Of Travelling The World Is That You Get To Know The World Broadly. And One Of The Advantages Of Staying In One Place Is That You Get To Know The World Deeply.
World
Advantage
Staying
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.
Comfort
Selfless
Way
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.
Writing
Creative
Steps
Despite The Constant Clamor For Attention From The Modern World, I Do Believe We Need To Procure A Psychological Space For Ourselves. I Apparently Know Some People Who Try To Achieve This By Logging Off Or Going Without Their Twitter Or Facebook For A Limited Period.
Believe
Space
People
The Magician To Some Degree Is Trying To Drive Him Or Herself Mad In A Controlled Setting, Within Controlled Laws.
Law
Mad
Trying
As Far As I Can See, It's Not Important That We Have Free Will, Just As Long As We Have The Illusion Of Free Will To Stop Us Going Mad.
Long
Mad
Important
This Is Not Anarchy, Eve. This Is Chaos.
Anarchy
Chaos
Vendetta
I'm Very Distanced From The Comics Industry. I Love The Comics Medium, But I Have No Time For The Industry.
Mediums
Industry
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.
Art
Writing
Thinking
Once You Realize What A Joke Everything Is, Being The Comedian Is The Only Thing That Makes Sense.
Humor
Comedian
Realizing
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.
Sex
Adventure
Everyday
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.
Hippie
Would Be
Fandoms
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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