Ed Brubaker Quotes

I guess you only know your home when you come back to it.

When you're reading a good noir, the shocks and twists have a way of feeling deja vu-like, as if you saw them coming, but hoped the characters would take a left turn ... not answer the phone, not sleep with that woman, not sell drugs to those cops ... but knew they would. It would have been wrong if they didn't, and the real surprise can be that you care about someone you know is in for hell. You relate to them, even when their hell is so much bigger than your own. But we're all going to die, and we all make mistakes.
The best noir stories make you forget plot entirely by giving you characters that feel so well-realised you can't look away as they fall.

I loved you, you know ... It's not my fault the world is what it is.

There is no us, and you know that as well as I do. There can't be. This is just a dream we're having. While all our friends sleep.

Midnighter: I told you this wasn't going to end well...
Bendix: ...but...I did what you...what the Authority...never could...fixed earth... Midnighter: No. You just gave them peace through corporate control and ignorance... through mindless consumerism.
Bendix: Bulls*%t! The air is clean...no wars...people are happier...you can't deny...it's a finer world.

Charlie had always been a sucker for this part ... the first days. The days when you let yourself believe the lies ... Not just that there's someone who truly sees you ... truly understands you ... to your soul ... but that you even want them to. That's the sweetest lie, the one you tell yourself.

A sailor at war with the wind and the sea.

Sometimes when I'm writing a superhero story I wonder if they really have to punch each other in the face. Is that really going to solve anything? I feel the same way sometimes when I watch episodes of Law & Order. I'm like, "Yeah, right. You found the sex offender and now everything is fine." TV is big on closure, but I think closure is horseshit in real life. I'm still haunted by stuff I did in my teen years when I think about it too much.

It wore him down, knowing how small he was ...
how insignificant he was to the things in the shadows ...
it wore him down until there was so little left in him ...
that he almost forgot who he really was.

Whatever you do, remember that. You're going to make a difference. A lot of times it won't be huge, it won't be visible even. But it will matter just the same. Don't do it for praise or money, that's what I want to tell you. Do it because it needs to be done. Do it to make your world better.