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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.

-Alan Moore

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In Comics The Reader

Alan Moore

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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.

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This Is Not Anarchy, Eve. This Is Chaos.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Behind This Mask There Is More Than Just Flesh. Beneath This Mask There Is An Idea... And Ideas Are Bulletproof.

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.

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

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

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.

Nothing Ends, Adrian. Nothing Ever Ends.

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.

It's Pretty Much A Fact That Our Entire Universe Is A Mental Construct. We Don't Actually Deal With Reality Directly. We Simply Compose A Picture Of Reality From What's Going On In Our Retinas, In The Timpani Of Our Ears, And In Our Nerve Endings.

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

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

Dan, I'm Not A Republic Serial Villain. Do You Seriously Think I'd Explain My Master-stroke If There Remained The Slightest Chance Of You Affecting Its Outcome? I Did It Thirty-five Minutes Ago.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

No One Will Ever Forget That Night, And What It Meant For This Country. But I Will Never Forget The Man And What He Meant To Me.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Art Makes Us Feel Less Alone. It Makes Us Think: Somebody Else Has Thought This, Somebody Else Has Had These Feelings.

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

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

Is It Meaningless To Apologize? Never.

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.

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'.

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

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

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

Everybody Has Their Story To Tell.

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

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.

Everybody Is Special. Everybody. Everybody Is A Hero, A Lover, A Fool, A Villain. Everybody. Everybody Has Their Story To Tell.

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.

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.

There's Always Been This Feedback Between Comics And Films. But I Think That If You Take That Analogy Too Far, If You Only See Comic Books In Terms Of Films, Then Eventually The Best We Can End Up With Is Films That Don't Move. It Would Make Us A Poor Relation To The Movie Industry.

War Is A Perversion Of Sex.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

There Is No Coincidence. Only The Illusion Of Coincidence.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

All Culture Must Have Arisen From Cult.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I Love Films That Are Made With Almost No Budget.

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.

It Was Kovacs Who Said "mother" Then, Muffled Under Latex. It Was Kovacs Who Closed His Eyes. It Was Rorschach Who Opened Them Again.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

Multiple Choice

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

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.

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.

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 Love The Smell Of Paper In The Morning; It Smells Like Victory.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 Superman Exists And He's American.

Language Comes First. It's Not That Language Grows Out Of Consciousness, If You Haven't Got Language, You Can't Be Conscious.

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.

Ideas, Unlike Solid Structures, Do Not Perish. They Remain Immortal, Immaterial And Everywhere, Like All Divine Things. Ideas Are A Golden, Savage Landscape That We Wander Unaware, Without A Map. Be Careful: In The Last Analysis, Reality May Be Exactly What We Think It Is.

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.

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

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.

Happiness Is The Most Insidious Prison Of All.

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.

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

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

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.

All We Ever See Of Stars Are Their Old Photographs.

Old Photographs

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.

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.

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.

Occupy Movement

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It Doesn't Do You Any Service To Demonize Any Group Of People. It's Much Better To Try And Understand From The Inside.

There Is An Inverse Relationship Between Imagination And Money.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

Does The Human Heart Know Chasms So Abysmal?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Dusk Reeks Of Fornication And Bad Consciences.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

Existence Is Random. Has No Pattern Save What We Imagine After Staring At It For Too Long. No Meaning Save What We Choose To Impose.

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.

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

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.

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.'

Never Despair. Never Surrender.

Never Surrender

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

...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?

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.

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

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.

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

Ideas Are Bulletproof.

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.

It Has Occurred To Me That The Superhero Really Only Originates In America. That Seems To Be The Only Country That Has Produced This Phenomenon.

You Know What I Wish? I Wish All The Scum Of The Earth Had One Throat And I Had My Hands About It.

Scum Of The Earth

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.

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