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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.

-Alan Moore

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If We Loved Steve

Alan Moore

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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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

I Did It Thirty-five Minutes Ago.

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.

Since Mankind's Dawn, A Handful Of Oppressors Have Accepted The Responsibility Over Our Lives That We Should Have Accepted For Ourselves. By Doing So, They Took Our Power. By Doing Nothing, We Gave It Away. We've Seen Where Their Way Leads, Through Camps And Wars, Towards The Slaughterhouse.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Well, What Do You Expect? The Comedian Is Dead.

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.

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

Happiness Is The Most Insidious Prison Of All.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

To Paint Comic Books As Childish And Illiterate Is Lazy. A Lot Of Comic Books Are Very Literate - Unlike Most Films.

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.

The Multiplying Villainies Of Nature Do Swarm Upon Him... [from Macbeth]

Never Despair. Never Surrender.

Never Surrender

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

No. Not Even In The Face Of Armageddon. Never Compromise.

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.

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.

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

Who Imprisoned Me Here? Who Keeps Me Here? Who Can Release Me? Who's Controlling And Constraining My Life Except...me?

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.

Heard Joke Once: Man Goes To Doctor. Says He's Depressed. Says Life Seems Harsh And Cruel. Says He Feels All Alone In A Threatening World Where What Lies Ahead Is Vague And Uncertain. Doctor Says, "treatment Is Simple. Great Clown Pagliacci Is In Town Tonight. Go And See Him. That Should Pick You Up." Man Bursts Into Tears. Says, "but Doctor...i Am Pagliacci.

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.

Why Do We Argue? Life's So Fragile, A Successful Virus Clinging To A Speck Of Mud, Suspended In Endless Nothing.

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

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

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.

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'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.

Things Are Tough All Over, Cupcake, An' It Rains On The Just An' The Unjust Alike...except In California.

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

My Main Point About Films Is That I Don't Like The Adaptation Process, And I Particularly Don't Like The Modern Way Of Comic Book-film Adaptations, Where, Essentially, The Central Characters Are Just Franchises That Can Be Worked Endlessly To No Apparent Point.

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.

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.

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

I'm The Idea Of The Human Imagination, Which, When You Think About It, Is The Only Thing We Can Really Be Certain Isn't Imaginary.

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.

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.

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

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'.

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.

Everybody Has Their Story To Tell.

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

Perhaps This Is The Purpose Of All Art, All Writing, On The Murders, Fiction And Non-fiction: Simply To Participate.

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.

We're All Puppets, Laurie. I'm Just A Puppet Who Can See The Strings.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Life Isn't Divided Into Genres

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

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.

I Don't Really Think That Very Much Is Interesting About The Superhero As An Archetype.

There Is An Inverse Relationship Between Imagination And Money.

Memory's So Treacherous. One Moment You're Lost In A Carnival Of Delights With Poignant Childhood Aromas, The Flashing Neon On Puberty, All That Sentimental Candyfloss. The Next, It Leads You Somewhere You Don't Want To Go.. Somewhere Dark And Cold, Filled With The Damp Ambiguous Shapes Of Things You'd Hoped Were Forgotten.

I Am Brother To Dragons, And Companion To Owls. My Skin Is Black Upon Me, And My Bones Are Burned With Heat.

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

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.

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.

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.

Nothing's That Simple, Not Even Things That Are Simply Awful.

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.

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.

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

The Announcement That There Is A League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Television Series Hasn't Caused Me To Drastically Alter My Opinions. Now It Seems They Are Recycling Things That Have Already Proven Not To Work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Admittedly, I Do Have Several Bones... Whole War Fields Full Of Bones, In Fact... To Pick With Organised Religion Of Whatever Stripe. This Should Be Seen As A Critique Of Purely Temporal Agencies Who Have, To My Mind, Erected More Obstacles Between Whatever Notion Of Spirituality And Godhead One Subscribes To Than They Have Opened Doors. To Me, The Difference Between Godhead And The Church Is The Difference Between Elvis And Colonel Parker... Although That Conjures Images Of God Dying On The Toilet, Which Is Not What I Meant At All.

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

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.

American Love — Like Coke In Green Glass Bottles...they Don't Make It Anymore.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Ideas Are Bulletproof.

I Was Kind Of A Selfish Child, Who Always Wanted Things His Way, And I've Kind Of Taken That Over Into My Relationship With The World.

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.

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.

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.

The Central Question Is, Is This Guy Right? Or Is He Mad? What Do You, The Reader, Think About This? Which Struck Me As A Properly Anarchist Solution. I Didn't Want To Tell People What To Think, I Just Wanted To Tell People To Think And Consider Some Of These Admittedly Extreme Little Elements, Which Nevertheless Do Recur Fairly Regularly Throughout Human History.

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.

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

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.

The Past Can't Hurt You Anymore, Not Unless You Let It.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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 Don't Like To Go To Conventions, And I Don't Like To Relate To People On A Level Of Hero Worship, Because There's No Real Communication Going On There.

War Is A Perversion Of Sex.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

Your Pretty Empire Took So Long To Build, Now, With A Snap Of History's Fingers, Down It Goes.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

People Shouldn't Be Afraid Of Their Government. Governments Should Be Afraid Of Their People.

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.

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.

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.

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

Truly, Whoever We Are, Wherever We Reside, We Exist Upon The Whim Of Murderers.

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

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.

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

Multiple Choice

This Is Not Anarchy, Eve. This Is Chaos.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

While A Truncheon May Be Used In Lieu Of Conversation, Words Will Always Retain Their Power.

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.

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.

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

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.

Does The Human Heart Know Chasms So Abysmal?

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The Superman Exists And He's American.

The Dusk Reeks Of Fornication And Bad Consciences.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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