Greg Rucka Quotes

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

Somebody's got to win this war, right? ~ Greg Rucka

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

Comics don't work without the visuals, obviously. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

Being cursed with human hands is no excuse for clumsiness! ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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.' ~ Greg Rucka

FN-2187 was simply Eight-Seven ~ Greg Rucka

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

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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

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 ~ Greg Rucka

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? ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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? ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

....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 ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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

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

'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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

I read a lot of science fiction, but I also mixed it up with a lot of other genres: crime, literary fiction, as well as nonfiction. Author-wise, I'm a fan of Stephen King, Lauren Beukes, Robert McCammon, Raymond Chandler, Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker and Gail Simone, among many others. ~ Adam Christopher

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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. ~ Greg Rucka

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

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. ~ Greg Rucka

Talking about corporations - they're so big. There's not a person at a corporation. ~ Greg Kinnear

We need more money for schools. We need more money for the kids. Ever think maybe the damn kids aren't worth it? ~ Greg Giraldo

Being a winner in life means finding a way to keep yourself in the personal space where you're being the best and most vibrant you instead of the smallest you. That is the secret to success in anything you want to do in life. That means not comparing yourself to anyone else and concentrating on you. Because when your self-esteem is in the shitter and you don't feel worthy, you look to others for validation, you settle for crappy things and all you get is crappy things and who wants that? ~ Greg Behrendt

There's nothing worse than a label to cement people's loyalties. ~ Greg Egan

To embrace the strategy of Jesus is to be engaged in what Dean Brackley calls "downward mobility." Our locating ourselves with those who have been endlessly excluded becomes an act of visible protest. For no amount of our screaming at the people in charge to change things can change them. The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them. The trickle-down theory doesn't really work here. The powers bent on waging war against the poor and the young and the "other" will only be moved to kinship when they observe it. Only when we can see a community where the outcast is valued and appreciated will we abandon the values that seek to exclude. ~ Greg Boyle

Shoes were invented by the Sith to keep our delicate toes in anguish and misery, I'm sure of it."
-Tahiri Veila (Edge of Victory: Conquest) ~ Greg Keyes

Right. I can tell from the bat wings and the leeches that you three are just all happy-smiles and rainbows. ~ Greg Farshtey

No passport is needed, ~ Greg Boudonck

I don't want comedy to be Bridesmaids 2. I'm not denigrating Bridesmaids but, enough already, let's stop pretending women are incalculably different to us. Seeking out podcasts, listening on headphones, it's like an intimate, specific conversation. People respond if it feels from the heart. I'm as neurotic a human being as lives, and I have my faults. I'm a drunk. But people really like that. ~ Greg Proops

Every disciple is a believer, but not every believer is necessarily a disciple. Anything short of discipleship, however, is settling for less than what God really desires for us.

Loving God more than anyone or anything else is the very foundation of being a disciple. If you want to live your Christian life to its fullest, then love Jesus more than anyone or anything else.

Either you will have harmony with God and friction with people, or you will have harmony with people and friction with God.

You become a disciple in the biblical sense only when you are totally and completely committed to Jesus Christ and His Word.

As a true disciple, your life won't only be characterized by practical results and a hunger for Scripture, but you also will have love for others - especially fellow believers. Without all of these characteristics, you can't really claim to be His disciple.

A person who has been with Jesus will boldly share his or her faith.

A person who has been with Jesus will be a person of prayer.

A person who has been with Jesus will be persecuted.

If for you, the Christian life is all about feeling good and having everything go your way, then you won't like being a disciple. Being a follower of Christ is the most joyful and exciting life there is. But it also can be the most challenging life there is. It's a life lived out under the command of someone other than yourself.

Mos ~ Greg Laurie

Fear sells better than sex and the iPhone 5 combined. ~ Greg Palast

Even chitlins smell good to a starving man. ~ Greg Iles

I like taking a character at the most intense moments of their lives and exploring all that in full and then moving on. ~ Greg Iles

I look forward to another good year next year. It would be nice to win, too. ~ Greg Maddux

Unfortunately, the average guy on the street believes that studying evolution leads to atheism. ~ Greg Graffin

The internet's a creepy thing, especially if you have kids. It says something very creepy about the fact that I use the same machine to masturbate with as I use to teach my kid the alphabet. ~ Greg Giraldo

Compare Russell Brand with Mark Levin. My politics align more with Levin, but Brand still makes me giggle. And I hate his politics. He's a piece of hairy dog shit, but he's quick-witted - and that makes him a persuasive piece of hairy dog shit. ~ Greg Gutfeld

The only way the band could make any money was by going on tour. But going on tour meant we had to get time off from our jobs, and we couldn't get enough time off to make enough money from touring to survive, so the only way to try was to quit our jobs. None of us had a job that was so wonderful that we were just dying to keep it. ~ Greg Saunier

I want you to inject this into a red-top Vacutainer and spin it down." "Okay. What tests do you want done?" "A CBC and a standard Chem-20. But don't throw any serum away. I may do some more tests, ~ Greg Iles

There were only a couple of Marvel characters I read. I read 'Iron Man.' I have a lot of those. And this was the time they tried X-Factor out. I was never an X-Men person, but I was like, 'Let me check out X-Factor.' I was more of a DC guy in general. ~ Greg Berlanti