Greg Rucka Quotes

I met one of my best resources because I cold-called the local FBI office one day early in my career with questions. The agent who took the call knew someone who knew someone who was ex-Army, trained in personal protection. The resulting introduction was one of the best, most enduring friendships I've ever enjoyed.

Speaking as a father, there is no rulebook, and you don't know how to do it. You just do the best you can.

When I was in high school, I started writing a serial novel, longhand, set in the Arthurian mythos, and influenced not incidentally by Marion Zimmer Bradley's 'The Mists of Avalon.'

I like the 'Keystone Kops' storyline. It didn't actually go quite the way I wanted to, but it was another great way to show how different life was in these two different corners of the DCU, being on the ground in these different areas.

There are a lot of people in the medium who came and got into the industry and work in the industry, and these are people who were raised on comics and loved comics. Comics are their religion. To such an extent, that they don't know anything else.

The worst thing that can happen for a writer is for a writer to start believing their own press. I think the industry, and the comics industry in particular, is littered with the bodies of writers who believed their own press. And you can see the moment they did, and then the work nosedives.

I think Batman has the Wolverine problem. I think he's overexposed.

Being cursed with human hands is no excuse for clumsiness!

For those he has ignored, he allows them this. He allows them God, their only ally. Places to worship, but no one to teach.

In their armor they were all the same, and that was the point, he understood. But he took pleasure in the moments when he could see their variety and diversity - those moments when he could glimpse the people beneath the armor and see them as more than just faceless, nameless soldiers identified by letters and numbers and nothing more.

Rapier Squadron was transferred from Mirrin Prime and redeployed aboard a refitted Mon Calamari cruiser called Echo of Hope.

In front of the officers, in front of Captain Phasma especially, they always used their appropriate designations,

In that moment he understood it had never been a game. He understood that he was never going to be one of them.

What is it you do for your family? Aside from trying to put it in your sister, I mean?

THERE WERE four of them in the fire-team, and because shouting out things like, "FN-twenty-one eighty-seven, watch your back!" was a mouthful, especially when the blaster fire was searing the air around them, they'd defaulted to shorter versions.

I'm hoping Lor San Tekka knows where to find my brother, Poe. And Luke Skywalker may be the only hope we have left.

Every character needs an adversary - one who is both challenging and a contrast for the hero. The best adversaries reveal something about the character they're contrasting.

The writer's curse is that the more you fall in love with the work you're doing, the more I think it shows.

DC are playing catch up with Marvel because of things like 'The Avengers' breaking six hundred million domestic.

A character wandering around asking, 'Who am I?' isn't, in and of itself, a story I'm interested in telling.

Fear is one of the elements of nonlethal weaponry. You're going to get hurt, and you don't want to get hurt. Pepper spray hurts. You don't want to be sprayed. That's why it's a useful deterrent as a nonlethal weapon - I'm not advocating spraying people randomly.

Leia was looking up at Poe, smiling ever so slightly. Flyboys. You're all the same.
Some of us are flygirls, Poe said.

A real stormtrooper is the extension of the First Order, of Supreme Leader Snoke's will, nothing less.

It was, strangely, like coming home, as if this was the place Poe had meant to be all along.

I think that Batman loses his efficacy and mythology if he's got too many people around him. That's what the Justice League is for, you know what I mean?

LOIS: The personal stuff you've been dealing with, did you feel like you needed someone to catch you? Were we not there for you?

DIANA: (pauses) You know how when people talk of depression, they talk of it both coming in storms and coming stealthily? So that, for many, it is the status quo, before they realize... that we lose our self-awareness in that. So I can't... I can't fault the people who love and care for me for not seeing what I did not myself see.

I think, again, when we have our moments of clarity, it is very easy to brush past them, to let the status quo continue. It can be very difficult and sometimes painful to turn and confront them. The only analogy I can think of is chronic pain. When that pain has been with you for so very long, it is background noise. And one is not aware of it until something happens that places it into relief.

LOIS: But you're not talking about physical pain?

DIANA: No. And I am not certain I am talking about emotional pain either. It has been difficult for me to untangle. I think there is a psychological element to it. I think it is important--and I think as a reporter that you would be inclined to agree--that we question those basic assumptions that we often decide are true.

I have found myself in a position where a great deal of what I took as true no longer seems accurate.

That may be because I have changed. That may be because the world has changed. Or it may be becaus

Every writer is going to end up drawing from their own experiences in one way or another.

Look, I like gritty. I write gritty. There is a time and a place for gritty. I'll take my Batman gritty, thank you, and I will acknowledge that such a portrayal means that my 11-year-old has to wait before he sees The Dark Knight. But if Hollywood turns out a Superman movie that I can't take him to? They've done something wrong.

We have our mission and we are going to complete it. So grab your straws and suck it the fuck up.

There are so many great characters because one of the things that makes Batman fantastic is that Batman is tragic. I've said this elsewhere; I've said it over and over again, but the beauty of the character is that he's a Don Quixote.

There is a sequence in my 'Detective Comics' run where you can't find consecutive issues by the same artist. That's intentional. That was done on purpose.

The FN P-35 was known more commonly as the Browning Hi-Power, a popular enough firearm to those who used it, and in and of itself, nothing more needed to be noted. Except the fact that the Browning was the sidearm of choice for the Special Air Service, and while the gun itself was produced by Fabrique Nationale, a Belgian concern, and named after an American gunmaker--John M. Browning--there were many who thought of the weapon as Very British Indeed.

I tend to see - socially, I don't tend to be myself in a male role. I don't know any other way to put it.

To me, the joy you're going to get in a 'Punisher' story is watching him punish incredibly wicked people. Now, if you can add to that an emotional content, wonderful.

Comics don't work without the visuals, obviously.

I can whitewash your little trip out to OR-Kappa-2722 for you. I can sweep it under the rug if you like. You can go back to leading Rapier Squadron and having your hands tied by Command, by Major Deso, by politicians who don't recognize what's happening right before their eyes. I can make it all go away, Poe." She leaned forward. "Or you can join the Resistance and help us stop the First Order before it's too late." "Where do I sign up?" Poe asked.

So when she wasn't sleeping or just sitting and listening to the storm or tinkering at her workbench, she flew.

No, the Empire needed to be fought. It had to be resisted.

The instructors demonstrated the use of each weapon, the vibro-axes and shock staffs and force pikes and resonator maces, elaborating at length on the respective strengths and weaknesses of each and when and how to employ them to best effect. They explained the composite alloys used to make the weapons, how some of the equipment was strong enough to block even a lightsaber. FN-2187 wondered about that - not whether it was true but whether or not they would ever be expected to fight someone who used a lightsaber. According to the First Order, the Jedi were extinct.

Somebody's got to win this war, right?

Their position at the Republic base in Mirrin Prime was marked by a gently pulsing gold dot

We forget when we're all grown up. 16 was a long time ago. It's hard to remember how freakin' difficult it is as 16! Life is not easy, and you're trying to figure stuff out.

The pistol had been one hell of a find, because it hadn't quite been what she'd thought it was at first blush. Not simply the S&W Mk 39, but rather a modified version of the same, the Mk 22 Mod 0, also called the "hush puppy". It was Vietnam-era, not the most reliable gun in the world, but wonderfully silent, not only equipped with a silencer to eliminate the sound of gunfire, but also with a slide lock, to keep the actual mechanical operation of the gun quiet as well. She'd test-fired the gun at the market before purchasing, and been stunned that it still worked. The Uzbek vendor had offered to sell it to her cheap.
"It's too quiet," he'd explained. "No one wants it."
Chace shut her eyes, half smiling at the memory.

Heroes are defined by their villains - Batman is nothing if he doesn't have Two-Face.

Like nightclubs and sporting events, entry into an amusement park is a permission to become someone else. We come for the experience and to relish it.

I'm not a huge Lovecraft fan as far as that goes; I think there are some stories of his that are really quite wonderful, but for the most part, I have great difficulties with his prose - and the more you know about the man, the harder it is to separate him from the work in many ways.

Some of the best moments I've ever written have come about because someone, somewhere, blew my preconceptions out of the water and dropped a detail in passing that took the work in an entirely new, entirely unexpected, direction.

So he was FN-2187, well on his way to becoming the ideal First Order stormtrooper. That was what everyone thought, at least. Except FN-2187 himself.

I love liminal characters. I love these characters that are outside and enter and consequently are perpetually outsiders, and who hold themselves to a higher standard.

Your ability to name every single variation of Kryptonite and every first issue in which it appears is a great pop quiz skill, but is not a great writing skill, all right? So just because you can do that doesn't mean you know how to write.

The female experience is different from that of the male, and if, as a male writer, you cannot accept that basic premise, then you will never, ever, be able to write women well.

One did not need to believe in the Force to know right from wrong.

You cannot lose what is inside you," Chirrut said. "You can only misplace it. The task, then, is to find it again.

FN-2187 was simply Eight-Seven

Comics fans want new stuff that looks exactly like the old stuff. It is hard for the publishers, and even the audience, to change something.

Character is made up of a variety of different things. One of those elements is gender.

'Alpha' is a very fast-moving book. It doesn't lend itself to laborious introspection and the navel-gazing that some stories can fall prey to.

When there's a clear vision, and you've got the creative teams working toward that goal, each on their own, it can then come together quite elegantly at the endpoint.

My college senior thesis was going to be on the American private investigator.

I showed up pretty much at the exact right moment to end up with a lot of work on my plate very quickly, because I was young and foolish, and so I wrote very quickly.

....but you're wrong" He said. "Life is about your family and the people that love you. Life is about your experiences. It's about LIVING and it's about the people that you share it with. The rest of it, the rest of them? They are chaff

Enlightened self-interest" was how Solo himself had described it.

There are still plenty of people who want to burn me at the stake for my Wonder Woman run. And I can't really blame them, you know? That was my take on the character, and when people are invested in the characters, they see them very clearly and in the way they like.

When I started out as a novelist, I thought I was going to be a private-eye writer. That was my intent, and that's what I studied, I mean, scholarly.

The stories that are out and the things that have been published are a sample of my interests. There are genres and sub-genres that I haven't waded into but have wanted to, or have waded into in other places but never actually written.

If someone arrives, fully functional yet a tabula rasa, how does their environment influence, educate, even mold them? And if that is a nurture question, then where does that character's nature fit in? How does that manifest?

Chace went to the bar to order the first round, two lagers. The barman was old, and old-fashioned, and when he served her one pine, presumably for Wallace, and a half, presumably for her, she sent the half back.
"No, another pint, if you please."
The barman's eyes turned critical. "Not terribly ladylike."
"I'm a terrible lady.

I do crazy amounts of research. I want this stuff to 'work,' so to speak. I need to be, at least to me, believable - because if I feel - if I cannot invest some element of verisimilitude, the reader is absolutely not going to buy in.

For the light to exist, there must be the dark. For the Force, there must be balance.

There was a time in my career when my hackles would really get raised if someone came in and said, 'We need you to do this or that.' But the fact of the matter is, you're working in a shared universe, and all elements of the universe are, ideally, going to mesh and work together. That's my goal. I want to be on the team.

THE WOOKIEE SIGHED, a low rumble, and gazed at the medal in his palm. On the humans it looked substantial and solid, fit to be worn around the neck. In his hand the scale was altered, and if he brought his fingers together he could conceal it entirely. A pretty thing, hastily engraved in a stylized flower meant perhaps to recall the emblem of the Republic. At its heart a rising sun, halfway above the horizon, both symbolized the dawn of a new hope in the wake of this victory over the Galactic Empire and recalled the Death Star's destruction.

The first story I can remember writing, that I truly set down on paper, was a Christmas story that I wrote when I was ten years old.

I think if you look back at some of the stuff that we broadly label as the crime 'ouvre,' there are certainly elements of the supernatural at work.

She would give him one more chance, Phasma decided. One last chance for FN-2187 to decide his fate.

I think when you're working with a character that another writer is acting as - for lack of a better word - custodian of, your obligation as a professional is to not do anything that violates that 'primary' take.

I am the product of Denny O'Neil in many ways, I carry forth a lot of what Denny instilled in me.

For every person who passes on the opportunity to write Spider-Man or Superman, I guarantee there are 5000 hungry writers who would give their eye-teeth to do it. But just because they want to do it, it doesn't mean they are capable of doing it.

We seek to craft characters who inspire empathy: characters our audience will care for and, as a result, will care about what happens to them and thus will share the journey we have charted. A story, after all, is the character's journey.

I've always had a thing for theme parks and their less-glorious cousins, amusement parks, the carnival midway, and others of such ilk.