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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.

-Alan Moore

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The Announcement That There

Alan Moore

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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.

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I Love Films That Are Made With Almost No Budget.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I 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.

There Is No Coincidence. Only The Illusion Of Coincidence.

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.

I’ve Known A Lot Of People Go Mad Over The Years, And It Is More Distressing Than People Dying. People Dying Is Quite Natural, People Going Mad Is The Complete Antithesis Of That.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I'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.

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.

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

Happiness Is The Most Insidious Prison Of All.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

There Is An Inverse Relationship Between Imagination And Money.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Love Your Rage, Not Your Cage.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Is It Meaningless To Apologize? Never.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I'm Very Distanced From The Comics Industry. I Love The Comics Medium, But I Have No Time For The Industry.

This Is Not Anarchy, Eve. This Is Chaos.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Superman Exists And He's American.

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

I'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.

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

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.

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

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

War Is A Perversion Of Sex.

Nothing Ends, Adrian. Nothing Ever Ends.

Life Isn't Divided Into Genres

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

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

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

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

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

In The Sixties, For Anybody To Suggest That The Government Didn't Have Our Best Interests At Heart And Policemen Sometimes Killed People Would Have Automatically Made Them A Radical Firebrand Lefty. That's Not The Case Anymore.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

All We Ever See Of Stars Are Their Old Photographs.

Old Photographs

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

It 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.

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.

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 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.

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

I 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Don't 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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'.

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.

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