Grant Morrison Quotes

I don't ignore continuity, and try my best to stick as closely to the current status quo as possible, but it's not my primary concern when I start a story. ~ Grant Morrison

When I approached 'Animal Man,' I approached it as if it wasn't a reboot, as if the Grant Morrison and Jamie Delano stuff happened. I mean, as much as I could make it all make sense, it still all happened. ~ Jeff Lemire

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

All it takes is one wrong turn. And there's always one wrong turn. ~ 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

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

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

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

Words are ugly when they travel in packs. ~ 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

Hell is only the Cringe Eternal and the Place of our Self's Undoing. When Nietzsche proclaimed "God is Dead!" he forgot to add that Satan is also dead and we are free from all that antique tat. ~ Grant Morrison

Sometimes you wonder, in an interconnected universe, who's dreaming who? ~ Grant Morrison

The Hoodmen are far from being the worst of the servants of the Cult of the Unwritten Book, but they are among the most peculiar. You know when you're trying to remember a word and it's on the tip of your tongue but you can't seem to get it out? Well, that's because the Hoodmen have eaten it. They eat all the words that are on the tips of other people's tongues. They thrive on misplaced words, savoring all the lost potential of each expression. They're also able to convert words into electricity. Mr. Steele took an entire phrase. ~ Grant Morrison

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

Hell changes constantly but there are certain consistent landmarks which always stay in the same relation to one another. ~ Grant Morrison

Stop being frightened. You only see a monster because they want you to see monsters everywhere. They've conditioned you to look for monsters in every shadow, every coat hung on every door. As long as we keep seeing monsters, we'll continue to need protection and that's how other people get to control our lives. ~ 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

I just wanted all the wars to be over so that we could spend the money on starships and Mars colonies. ~ Grant Morrison

I'm at a stage in my career where I don't expect or get too much editorial input into what I'm doing. I have a proven track record of success, so my editors are willing to cut me some slack even when a particular approach is not to their personal taste. ~ Grant Morrison

Enjoy yourself out there... in the asylum. ~ Grant Morrison

Pop, like Chronos the Titan, always eats its darlings. ~ Grant Morrison

Kipling: Where's your sense of humor?
Rebis: We're working on reconstructing it ... ~ Grant Morrison

Sometimes it's only madness that makes us what we are. ~ Grant Morrison

A cannon fires only once but words detonate across centuries ~ 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

Here's a list of some of the folks who have written Swamp Thing over the years: Alan Moore, Len Wein, Scott Snyder, Brian K Vaughan, Joshua Dysart, Rick Veitch, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar. That's not even a full list, but you see my point - ol' Swampy has had some seriously brilliant people behind the keyboard in his time. ~ Charles Soule

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

We live in the stories we tell ourselves. ~ 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

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

Sometimes I pretend not to look at my own characters, because that's like different people getting off with your girlfriend or something. ~ 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

Whatever you do, make sure you go right to the top, because you sure as hell can't piss upwards on people. ~ Grant Morrison

I really think this is it...
Third time lucky.
This is the one...
...this is going to change everything. ~ Grant Morrison

Our stupidity has turned the world into a hand grenade. Our greed has pulled the pin. ~ 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

Cassandra Nova impersonating Xavier: Imagine the responsibility of all that destructive potential. The power to crack the firmament and extinguish suns ... Imagine that in the wrong hands. ~ Grant Morrison

Idealists and reformers all become executioners in their turn. The road to utopia ends with the steps of the scaffold, the endless moment of the guillotine. ~ 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

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

Doctor Doom was exactly the sort of bastard who would have armed al-Qaeda with death rays and killer robots if he thought for one second it would piss off the hated Reed Richards and the rest of his mortal enemies in the Fantastic Four, but here he was sobbing with the best of them, as representative not of evil, but of Marvel Comics' collective shock, struck dumb and moved to hand-drawn tears by the thought that anyone could hate America and its people enough to do this. ~ Grant Morrison

This is the end of our sentence ~ Grant Morrison

You have given them an ideal to aspire to, embodied their highest aspirations.
They will race, and stumble, and fall and crawl ... and curse ... and finally ...
They will join you in the sun, Kal-El.
They will stumble, they will fall.
But in time, they will join you in the sun.
In time you will help them accomplish wonders. ~ Grant Morrison

Study yourself the way a hunter studied prey. Exploit your own weaknesses to create desired changes within yourself. ~ Grant Morrison

Your pleasures lessen in intensity the more the are repeated. Yet your capacity to experience ever more agony--is inexhaustible. ~ Grant Morrison

Who needs girls when you've got comics? ~ Grant Morrison

I can always see ways to improve what I've done. At the same time, knowing it's all an ongoing life's work allows me to be less precious about blind alleys, failed experiments, and misfires. ~ Grant Morrison

I was a Marvel kid, and I would have to say that Spiderman is my all-time favorite character. As I got older, my tastes developed a little bit more, and I would follow certain writers; like, I really got into Grant Morrison. From the time I was 5, I was into comic books. From the time I learned how to read, it was all about comic books. ~ Corey Taylor

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

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

Before it was a Bomb, the Bomb was an Idea. Superman, however, was a Faster, Stronger, Better Idea. ~ 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

From now on, I'm opting for ontological terrorism. ~ Grant Morrison

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

CYCLOPS: Emma ... I knew you wouldn't turn your back on us.
EMMA: Sweet as you are, I didn't come back for you Scott. I came for my handbag. Lucky for you, this is a Louis Vuitton. ~ Grant Morrison

To know that we are only angels weighed down by filth, free of guilt? The bacteria in our bellies are responsible for the farts which shame us, tiny monsters shitting in their billions all over our pure skin create the acid reek of "our" sweat. And Slade: when the "inner voices" tell us we're unworthy or instruct us to "love" and "hate," despite our best instincts ... are these incessant distracting thoughts our own? Or do we only hear the voice of the eternal germ screaming in our heads? ~ Grant Morrison

Individual humans are not super, but the organism of which we are all tiny cellular parts is most certainly that. The life-form that's so big we forget it's there, that turns minerals on its planet into tools to touch the infinite black gap between stars or probe the obliterating pressures at the bottom of the oceans. We are already part of a superbeing, a monster, a god, a living process that is so all encompassing that it is to an individual life what water is to a fish. We are cells in the body of a three-billion-year-old life-form whose roots are in the Precambrian oceans and whose genetic wiring extends through the living structures of everything on the planet, connecting everything that has ever lived in one immense nervous system. ~ 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

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 will rise from the darkness, shining like the morning star.
Illuminated woman am I. ~ 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

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

He can survive anywhere. Anytime. Surviving is what he does. ~ Grant Morrison

I couldn't think of one clever way to stop this guy, so I just trusted to mindless violence. ~ 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

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

Madness is born in the blood. It is my birthright. ~ 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

Reality and unreality have no clear distinction in our present circumstances. ~ Grant Morrison

Truth speaks best in the language of poetry and symbolism, I think. ~ Grant Morrison

There's a palace in your head, boy. Learn to live in it always. ~ Grant Morrison

My interest in comics was scribbled over with a revived, energized passion for clothes, records, and music. I'd wandered in late to the punk party in 1978, when it was already over and the Sex Pistols were history.

I'd kept my distance during the first flush of the new paradigm, when the walls of the sixth-form common room shed their suburban-surreal Roger Dean Yes album covers and grew a fresh new skin of Sex Pistols pictures, Blondie pinups, Buzzcocks collages, Clash radical chic. As a committed outsider, I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this new musical fad,
which I'd written off as some kind of Nazi thing after seeing a photograph of Sid Vicious sporting a swastika armband. I hated the boys who'd cut their long hair and binned their crappy prog albums in an attempt to join in. I hated pretty much everybody without discrimination, in one way or another, and punk rockers were just something else to add to the shit list.

But as we all know, it's zealots who make the best converts. One Thursday night, I was sprawled on the settee with Top of the Pops on the telly when Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex turned up to play their latest single: an exhilarating sherbet storm of raw punk psychedelia entitled "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" By the time the last incandescent chorus played out, I was a punk. I had always been a punk. I would always be a punk. Punk brought it all together in one place for me: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius nov ~ Grant Morrison

It's salt. Why don't you sprinkle some on me, honey? Aren't I just good enough to eat? ~ Grant Morrison

All the comics are sigils. "Sigil" as a word is out of date. All this magic stuff needs new terminology because it's not what people are being told it is at all. It's not all this wearying symbolic misdirection that's being dragged up from the Victorian Age, when no-one was allowed to talk plainly and everything was in coy poetic code. The world's at a crisis point and it's time to stop bullshitting around with Qabalah and Thelema and Chaos and Information and all the rest of the metaphoric smoke and mirrors designed to make the rubes think magicians are 'special' people with special powers. It's not like that. Everyone does magic all the time in different ways. "Life" plus "significance" = magic. ~ Grant Morrison

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

The multiverse has natural defenses none of you could have imagined. No one %$%$ with the judge of all evil. ~ Grant Morrison

I plan years in advance, but I like to leave enough space in the narrative scheme to change things, because I always get my best ideas the closer I come to the end of a project, after I've lived with it for a while. ~ 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

Only nothing is impossible. ~ Grant Morrison

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

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 didn't quit drinking. I stopped drinking shitty alcohol with assholes. And that, my friend, was the healthiest choice I've ever made. ~ Grant Morrison

Don't patronize me or I'll break your face - Damian Wayne (Prime Earth) ~ Grant Morrison

I have to confess I'm not a huge comics fan in the wider sense of comics as an art form. ~ Grant Morrison

I won't tell you again! Don't look back! In hell you never look back! ~ 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

Remember it's all just a mirror we made to see ourselves in. ~ Grant Morrison

Self-awareness: there is the black worm in the apple. Our curse is to know there's something terribly wrong with us. ~ Grant Morrison

[He] ... watches the Joker rising from his wheelchair, the way a rabbit watches car headlights bearing down, unable to move a single, spotlit muscle. The madman's limbs appear to unlatch as though some psychotic god has chosen to give life to a complicated Swiss Army knife. The Joker's head rotates ... the green lasers of his eyes target the keys at the big man's belt, and he shakes his head. ~ Grant Morrison

When was the last time you had a thought that wasn't put there by THEM? ~ Grant Morrison

No matter how shitty things are, you can always get a song out of it. ~ 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

Batman knew what it was like to trip balls without seriously losing his shit, and that savoir faire added another layer to his outlaw sexiness and alluring aura of decadence and wealth. ~ Grant Morrison

It's always interesting to see what the real enthusiasts think, but they're rarely representative of the tastes of the wider audience, so I tend to write for myself, for an imagined smart 14-year-old, and for a couple of friends who are still big comics fans. ~ 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

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

I see now the virtue in madness, for this country knows no law nor any boundary. I pity the poor shades confined to the Euclidean prison that is sanity ~ 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

Of course I'm a threat. Why? Did you think for a moment that I wasn't? - Emma Frost ~ Grant Morrison

And I ask him why he cuts his arms with a razor. Just fo feel. Just to feel something. ~ Grant Morrison