Grant Morrison quotes
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We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
-- Grant Morrison -
Your character that you create in your writing not only represents who you are, but also represents a number of people who you've met along the way.
-- Grant Morrison -
Gayness is built into Batman. I'm not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There's just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he's intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay.
-- Grant Morrison -
Superman loves everyone. He's like Jesus except he punches people.
-- Grant Morrison -
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The interior of our skulls contains a portal to infinity.
-- Grant Morrison -
With Marvel and DC, you're working with their pre-established fictional universes and characters. At those places, you're working with characters who will outlive you and maybe your children and your childern's children. Batman will outlive me, Spider-Man will outlive me, the Avengers will outlive me, and so it goes.
-- Grant Morrison -
I just wanted all the wars to be over so that we could spend the money on starships and Mars colonies.
-- Grant Morrison -
There's a palace in your head, boy. Learn to live in it always.
-- Grant Morrison -
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Sometimes you wonder, in an interconnected universe, who's dreaming who?
-- Grant Morrison -
If our shallow, self-critical culture sometimes seems to lack a sense of the numinous or spiritual it's only in the same way a fish lacks a sense of the ocean.
-- Grant Morrison -
Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world.
-- Grant Morrison -
Your head's like mine, like all our heads; big enough to contain every god and devil there ever was. Big enough to hold the weight of oceans and the turning stars. Whole universes fit in there! But what do we choose to keep in this miraculous cabinet? Little broken things, sad trinkets that we play with over and over. The world turns our key and we play the same little tune again and again and we think that tune's all we are.
-- Grant Morrison -
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We've always known we'd eventually be called upon to open our shirts and save the day, and the superhero was a crude, hopeful attempt to talk about how we all might feel on that day of great power, and great responsibility.
-- Grant Morrison -
Enough madness? Enough? And how do you measure madness? - The Joker
-- Grant Morrison -
I run blindly through the madhouse ... And I cannot even pray ... For I have no God.
-- Grant Morrison -
Study yourself the way a hunter studied prey. Exploit your own weaknesses to create desired changes within yourself.
-- Grant Morrison -
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When [Wonder Woman creator William Moulton] Marston died in 1947, they got rid of the pervy elements, and instantly sales plummeted. Wonder Woman should be the most sexually attractive, intelligent, potent woman you can imagine. Instead she became this weird cross between the Virgin Mary and Mary Tyler Moore that didn't even appeal to girls.
-- Grant Morrison -
One must commit acts of the highest treason only when dressed in the most resplendent finery.
-- Grant Morrison -
I loved IRON MAN: Robert Downey Jr. has been and probably will be my favourite actor for a long time…but IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, SUPERMAN RETURNS and all the others feel a little like Saturday morning cartoons next to the carbon black glory that is 'The Dark Knight.' Trust me, *this* is the future of this sort of thing.
-- Grant Morrison -
It's salt. Why don't you sprinkle some on me, honey? Aren't I just good enough to eat?
-- Grant Morrison -
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Before it was a Bomb, the Bomb was an Idea. Superman, however, was a Faster, Stronger, Better Idea.
-- Grant Morrison -
Sometimes it’s only madness that makes us what we are.
-- Grant Morrison -
Look at us! Are we not proof that there is no good, no evil, no truth, no reason? Are we not proof that the universe is a drooling idiot with no fashion sense - Mr Nobody on the fundamental philosophy of the Brotherhood of DADA
-- Grant Morrison -
I should say I am far more cleverer than any of the people who put me here. As a matter of fact, I could leave any time I wanted. It's only a doll house after all. Anyway, I don't mind. I like dolls. Particularly the live ones.
-- Grant Morrison -
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We tell our children they're trapped like rats on a doomed, bankrupt, gangster-haunted planet with dwindling resources, with nothing to look forward to but rising sea levels and imminent mass extinctions, then raise a disapproving eyebrow when, in response, they dress in black, cut themselves with razors, starve themselves, gorge themselves, or kill one another.
-- Grant Morrison -
Oh, yes! Fill the churches with dirty thoughts! Introduce honesty to the White House! Write letters in dead languages to people you've never met! Paint filthy words on the foreheads of children! Burn your credit cards and wear high heels! Asylum doors stand open! Fill the suburbs with murder and rape! Divine madness! Let there be ecstasy, ecstasy in the streets! Laugh and the world laughs with you!
-- Grant Morrison -
Kipling: Where's your sense of humor? Rebis: We're working on reconstructing it...
-- Grant Morrison -
Laugh and the world laughs with you!
-- Grant Morrison -
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It's stupid, I know, but I care. All the things that meant so much when we were young. Under the blankets late at night, listening to long-distance radio. All those things lost now or broken. Can you remember? Can you remember that feeling? Perhaps I ought to go to a doctor.
-- Grant Morrison -
When was the last time you had a thought that wasn't put there by THEM?
-- Grant Morrison -
Because it all derived from Superman. I mean, I love all the characters, but Superman is just this perfect human pop-culture distillation of a really basic idea. He's a good guy. He loves us. He will not stop in defending us. How beautiful is that? He's like a sci-fi Jesus. He'll never let you down. And only in fiction can that guy actually exist, because real guys will always let you down one way or another. We actually made up an idea that beautiful. That's just cool to me. We made a little paper universe where all of the above is true.
-- Grant Morrison -
A comic will always be more 'personal' than a DVD or CD, both of which require electronic 'players' to decode their content. With comics, the reader is the player so the engagement with the material is always more fundamental and dynamic. Reading comics is a much less passive activity than consuming CDs and DVDs.
-- Grant Morrison -
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Truth speaks best in the language of poetry and symbolism, I think.
-- Grant Morrison -
I AM happyâ€. They understood what we english people have long forgot. We're not our sadness. We're not our happiness or our pain but our language hypnotizes us and traps us in little labelled boxes ()
-- Grant Morrison -
Hell changes constantly but there are certain consistent landmarks which always stay in the same relation to one another.
-- Grant Morrison -
Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.
-- Grant Morrison -
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American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he's too powerful; you can't give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman's relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it's still a story about your relatives visiting.
-- Grant Morrison -
Superhero science has taught me this: Entire universes fit comfortably inside our skulls. Not just one or two but endless universes can be packed into that dark, wet, and bony hollow without breaking it open from the inside. The space in our heads will stretch to accommodate them all. The real doorway to the fifth dimension was always right here. Inside. That infinite interior space contains all the divine, the alien, and the unworldly we’ll ever need.
-- Grant Morrison -
A cannon fires only once but words detonate across centuries
-- Grant Morrison -
I thought I could capture the stories of the city on paper. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city. Horror stories you see. I tell you I didn't have to look far for material. Everywhere I looked, there were stories hidden there in the dark corners. . . . I wrote and still there were more. . . . No one would publish them. 'Too horrible,' they said. 'Sick mind,' they said. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city but the horror is too big and it goes on forever.
-- Grant Morrison -
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I will rise from the darkness, shining like the morning star. Illuminated woman am I.
-- Grant Morrison -
I'm the evil mastermind behind the scenes. I'm the wicked puppeteer who pulls the strings and makes you dance. I'm your writer.
-- Grant Morrison -
Why am I in Hell? It hurts. It hurts all the time. Why am I in Hell? I just want to go home and lie on the bed the way I used to. Please take me home.
-- Grant Morrison -
He felt the hot impact of bullets. He heard the sound of chopping meat. He thought 'is that me?' . . . and then he opened his eyes.
-- Grant Morrison -
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Write comic books if you love comic books so much that you want to write them. Don't write them like movies. Comics can do a lot of things that movies can't do, and vice versa.
-- Grant Morrison -
Unlike novel characters, comic book characters last an eternity. When a character is changed beyond recognition, there's no longer the merchandising aspect.
-- Grant Morrison -
There are dozens of unfinished or aborted projects in my files, but I can only assume they don't get done because they're not robust enough to struggle through the birth process.
-- Grant Morrison -
It's hard for me to believe that a shy, bespectacled college graduate like Brad Meltzer who's a novelist and a father is a really setting out to be weirdly misogynistic.
-- Grant Morrison -
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I was always interested in myths growing up. So, first I got into some Roman myths, then I was interested in Norse, then Celtic, then I started spreading to all the other mythologies.
-- Grant Morrison -
I think any writer coming on to 'Batman' should at least attempt to do their own definitive version. What it means to them. Whatever they think that symbol or character can say.
-- Grant Morrison -
Burnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words.
-- Grant Morrison -
The thing that's been exciting about 'Superman' is to see how the character has developed through generations.
-- Grant Morrison -
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The only time I ever met a character that I wrote was when I met Ian McKellan, when he was playing Magneto in the 'X-Men' movies.
-- Grant Morrison -
I was a clubber in the Nineties. I went dancing every week.
-- Grant Morrison -
I'm lucky to have a job doing something I really love to do, and I'm happy to accept the pressures of relentless deadlines or reader expectations as necessary evils. It's probably not as stressful as mining coal or leading men into battle.
-- Grant Morrison -
I guess my inspiration is this - I like to pretend that every story that ever happened to 'Batman' was real and is part of this one guy's life.
-- Grant Morrison -
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I don't like to think of my readership as 'fans,' a word which has always suggested a kind of power relationship I'm uncomfortable with.
-- Grant Morrison -
I love 'Batman.' I love the Adam West 'Batman.' I love the animated 'Batman.' The character of Batman can encompass any interpretation, which is what makes that character so brilliant and why it's survived so many different media.
-- Grant Morrison -
I tend to only read comics written by friends or people I've known. And I'm not a great comic reader.
-- Grant Morrison -
My art school rejection letter arrived as a cold manila fist that closed around my fragile hopes ... The fear was practically edible. Nothing would happen unless I get out and make it happen. Then, as if handling me the keys to the jet pack, my dad bought me a typewriter and a taped message to the inside of its case: "Son - the world is waiting to hear from you".
-- Grant Morrison -
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X-Men is not a story about superheroes, but a story about the ongoing revolutionary struggle between good/new and bad/old. The X-Men are every rebel teenager wanting to change the world and make it better. Humanity is every adult, clinging to the past, trying to destroy the future even as he places all his hopes there.
-- Grant Morrison -
Consciousness, rather than being something that we have, is something we participate in.
-- Grant Morrison -
It’s mostly just you have to convince yourself that there’s nothing else in the room but John Lennon and suddenly things start John Lennon-ing!
-- Grant Morrison -
In the world of the superheroes, everything had value, potential, mystery. Any person, thing, or object could be drafted into service in the struggle against darkness and evil - remade as a weapon or a warrior or a superhero. Even a little bee named Michael - after God's own avenging angel - could pitch in to win the battle against wickedness.
-- Grant Morrison -
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Actually, it's as if [Superman is] more real than we are. We writers come and go, generations of artists leave their interpretations, and yet something persists, something that is always Superman.
-- Grant Morrison -
Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases.
-- Grant Morrison -
This is the end of our sentence
-- Grant Morrison -
The perfect fascist state needs to operate in conditions of perpetual warfare. Have you ever noticed how the world has been in constant crisis since World War II?
-- Grant Morrison -
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Imagine the earth’s population of six billion people reduced to just one hundred representatives. Statistically, that makes 30 white, 70 non-white. It means 6 people own 59% of the wealth and they all live in North America. 80 are in substandard housing. One has an education. One owns a computer. Don’t blame me if it all sounds crazy.
-- Grant Morrison -
I’m a false icon! The media collaborate in promoting my superficial lifestyle as somehow more valid, more worthy of attention than your real lives! - Gideon Stargrave
-- Grant Morrison -
Talking to oneself, I have often thought, is the best way to be sure of intelligent and witty conversation.
-- Grant Morrison -
It's quite possible we may actually be looking at some kind of super-sanity here. A brilliant new modification of human perception, more suited to urban life at the end of the twentieth century...He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the lord of misrule and the world as a theatre of the absurd.
-- Grant Morrison -
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Only nothing is impossible.
-- Grant Morrison -
Abandon the 'I', because it's a lie.
-- Grant Morrison -
I couldn't think of one clever way to stop this guy, so I just trusted to mindless violence.
-- Grant Morrison -
We're the new power, come to replace the old. Cameras in the head, children with microchips, spin doctors rewriting reality as it happens.
-- Grant Morrison -
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He read me extracts from a medical journal describing the progress of a staphylococcus aureus infection. And then he pleasured me with a potato.
-- Grant Morrison -
The only thing that made me, or any of us, special was that no one in the whole of history would ever see the universe exactly the same way any other of us saw it.
-- Grant Morrison -
If this book has made any point clear, I hope it's that things don't have to be real to be true. Or vice versa.
-- Grant Morrison -
Seven actors have played Batman on the big screen, and if you can name all seven without reading any further, your youth has been wasted.
-- Grant Morrison -
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And that's why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death.
-- Grant Morrison -
The first light had cast the first shadow.
-- Grant Morrison -
Life doesn't have plots and subplots and denouements. It's just a big collection of loose ends and dangling threads that never get explained.
-- Grant Morrison -
And when it's all done, when there's no one left you'll come back for me. And tell me who I am and why I have to do what I do. And explain 'Eternity.' You'll come back
-- Grant Morrison -
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Why did you make it so hard for me? I'd rather empty the ocean with a sieve. I do it for you. Or count the grains of sand on every beach. All for you. There are so many people, so many countries. But I have time. All the time in the world. Eternity.
-- Grant Morrison -
All I know is that you won't come back until they're all dead. 'Eternity.' Every last one of them. Every man. Every woman. Every child. Global massacre. I dream about that day. A planet of corpses
-- Grant Morrison -
Then I reminded myself that all intelligent children suffer bad dreams.
-- Grant Morrison -
These characters were like twelve-bar blues or other chord progressions. Given the basic parameters of Batman, different creators could play very different music.
-- Grant Morrison -
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Sometimes... sometimes I think the Asylum is a head. We're inside a huge head that dreams us all into being. Perhaps it's your head, Batman. Arkham is a looking glass... and we are you.
-- Grant Morrison -
The moon is so beautiful. It's a big silver dollar, flipped by God. And it landed scarred side up, see? So He made the world.
-- Grant Morrison -
And I ask him why he cuts his arms with a razor. "Just fo feel. Just to feel something.
-- Grant Morrison -
Afraid? Batman's not afraid of anything. It's me. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that The Joker may be right about me. Sometimes…I question the rationality of my actions. And I’m afraid that when I walk through those asylum gates... when I walk into Arkham and the doors close behind me... it’ll be just like coming home.
-- Grant Morrison -
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Einstein was wrong! I"M the speed of like CRACKING through shivery rainbows and GOD the sky whirls and withers like a melting RAINBOW!
-- Grant Morrison -
The 'medium' is unaware of its attractiveness, that's all. Everyone loves comics. I've proven this to my own satisfaction by handing them out to acountants, insurance brokers, hairdressers, mothers of children, black belts, pop stars, taxi drivers, painters, lesbians, doctors etc. etc. The X-Files, Buffy, the Matrix, X-Men - mainstream culture is not what it once was when science fiction and comics fans huddled in cellars like Gnostic Christians dodging the Romans. We should come up into the light soon before we suffocate.
-- Grant Morrison -
From now on, I'm opting for ontological terrorism.
-- Grant Morrison
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