Brian k. vaughan quotes

Brubaker and Phillipss books have always been about eight years ahead of their time.

Some people are haunted by their pasts, but not my family. I mean, how can you be haunted by something that never really dies?

The biggest inspiration for everything I do is, of course, my wife, playwright Ruth McKee.

You'd never be able to convince someone to give you money to do a bilingual story where you're not translating half of it - you'd drive people crazy. But in comics, you can do whatever your heart desires.

Yeah, that's right. Flee in terror, bitches!

Once upon a time, each of us was somebody's kid. Everyone had a father, even if he never provided anything more than his seed. Everyone had a mother, even if she had to leave us on a stranger's doorstep. No matter how we're eventually raised, all of our stories begin the exact same way. They all end the same, too.

I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland in 1988 and there was just one year where suddenly all of the delivery kids that used to be boys were suddenly girls. It happened at our church too. Altar boys were suddenly altar girls. There was just this sense that all these young women knew there were openings here to be the first of their kind.

We're always looking roughly 30 years behind us. In the '80s they were obsessed with the '50s and so on.

I'm not afraid of the world. I'm afraid of a world without you.

I mean, do you know what you get when you call a suicide hotline in New York city? A busy signal. Literally.

There are only three forms of high art: the symphony, the illustrated children's book and the board game.

I just want to take a realistic look now, now that we have enough distance.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.

After ten years of toiling away in Hollywood, I realized that there's no better place for new ideas than comics.

What cruel creatures men are. Our bodies tell us to love so many, but there's room in our hearts for so few.

I realized that for fantasy and science fiction, especially from my youth, white was the default. Luke Skywalker was in the lead, or even if you were a hobbit, you're going to be white. That was an extremely old-fashioned, obviously really narrow-minded way to look at things.

It's just people who grew up in that time are suddenly old enough to be creators themselves, but I think they have a little perspective. I'm 40 now, and I have children of my own. Before I forget my own childhood completely, I want to take some time to take a look at the '80s and think back.

Okay, is anyone else worried that some of the fruit didn't fall far enough away from the tree?

They hurt you. You hurt 'em back. Or maybe it is the other way around. Whatever. Someday you might find a way to forgive each other. But it won't be like it used to 'cause that pain never really goes away.

I'm the one who started spreading that particular factoid, about Bendis, Azz and me all being bald Brian's from Cleveland, just to get my name mentioned in the same sentence as two much-better writers, and it's worked like a goddamn charm. Next up, I'm going to grow a big, disgusting beard, just so people will start talking about Alan Moore and me in the same breath.

My mom once told me that a good relationship isn't where the other person makes you feel better, but where they make *you* better.

A comic script is basically a love letter from you to your artist.

I like things that are weirdly imaginative and couldn't be real, but I also like stories that are recognizable and relatable.

I've written about teenage heroes before, on Marvel's Runaways, and I remember at the time when I pitched it, it was a team that had more female members than males. Even that caused of much discussion about, "Will there be a market for this, and should there at least be equal number of male and females?"

I, for example, am a pompous asshole, but my comics are genius!

The appealing thing about comics: There literally is no budget in comics. You're only limited by your imagination.

Comics are essentially films with fewer frames per second.

For a lot of arcane shipping reasons, new comics, even digital ones, have a long history of only being released on Wednesdays.

After 9/11, I knew I wanted to write about power and identity and the way Americans on all sides of the political spectrum often mythologize our leaders, which are themes that the superhero genre has always handled really well.

I remember seeing Stand by Me, when I was around 12, and just feeling like, "This is so refreshing to see kids swear and smoke cigarettes like my friends." It just felt much more real than the Sesame Street version of childhood that I'd been spoon-fed.

If a good editor will let me tell my story with the right artist, I'm happy.

When a man carries an instrument of violence, he'll always find the justification to use it.

I'm still digesting the '90s. It takes some time to get perspective.

There's a lot of dark stuff from the '80s that we don't think about.

I've never had any interest in retelling stories from my youth.

Doesn't matter if it's personal or professional, a good partnership takes work.

I am a big theater fan. It's mostly just being pretentious, I think, and trying to look smart.

In film, you have the luxury of accomplishing what you need in 24 frames every second. Comics, you only have five or six panels a page to do that.

But nothing warps time quite like childhood

The longer I've been writing scripts, the more I find that you have to give the artist more leeway or else you'll just be disappointed. You can't force them to draw every image that's in your head. Since I'm a horrific artist, I wouldn't want them to anyway. So I definitely give them a lot more leeway now than I did at the beginning.

I grew up with a sister I was very close with and a mom who was a powerful influence on my life. I was always close with women.

Comics brought me to the dance. It'll always be my first loyalty.

There are a lot of differing opinions on that. Some people think you should change out more, but I think changing just 20 percent is less stressful on the aquarium and fish. Once you get used to the regimen, it's pretty easy.

That was the appealing thing about comics: There literally is no budget in comics. You're only limited by your imagination.

Just go out there and get your heart broken in, so it'll be ready when you really need it.

Fans of my books have just been supremely nice.

How is it possible that our parents lied to us?" "Lets see: Santa, the Tooth Fairy,the Easter bunny,um, God. You're the prettiest kid in school. This wont hurt a bit. Your face will freeze like that..." "Everythings going to be alright.

Immigration confuses and terrifies me, so why not try to write a comic and make some sense of it?

I've been fortunate enough to travel to comic conventions in Portugal, France, Canada, and it's an honor to get to meet people from all over the world.

There's a lot of fiction from that period that we're nostalgic for.

I genuinely am sort of an emotionally stunted man-child, so if I just write to the top of my intelligence, it sounds like a teenager. I like being around teenagers. It's good for drama; they feel everything much more intensely than adults do, their lives are much more interesting than ours. They're mutants. They have these weird bodies that are rebelling against them and changing every day. Teenagers always equal good drama.

I know I'm a grumpy old man, but I'm always more delighted by readers talking about the actual comics than people talking about how eager they are to have their favorite comics be "elevated" into another medium. Adaptations are great, but for me, comics have always been the destination, not a stepping-stone to get somewhere else.

Sure, this will probably end up being another in a long line of emotionally crippling misadventures...but let's try to have some fun along the way.

I think a lot of creators are attracted to those toys they got to play with when they were young, and everyone wants to write a Superman story or a Batman story or a Spider-Man story. I don't know, if it's been successful for me, it should be successful for anyone. "Hit the ground with your feet running" is the secret of breaking new characters when it seems like no one else is having any luck.

I have no imagination; I just steal from life and change the color. Then it's a comic book.

Happy endings are bullshit. There are only happy pauses.

We describe [Paper Girls] as Stand By Me meets Terminator.It's a story about nostalgia and childhood, but with an action-packed, sci-fi bent.

Life is mostly just learning how to lose.

I'm just grateful to finally be telling a story with all females at the lead.

These are the young women [in Stand by Me] that we grew up knowing and hopefully they feel a little rough around the edges, because it's true to life.

I don't start a story until I know where it's going to end.

I start with something that makes me angry or confused, and then I write about it. It's a form of self-help.

Violence is stupid. Even as a last resort, it only ever begets more of the same.

All writing is the same: It's just making up lies until it starts to sound like the truth. That's what I do.

I'm really happiest living life 22 pages at a time and putting things in little boxes on pages.

We've all seen lots of stories about a young protagonist having adventures, and usually they're all boys, [and] there is sometimes a token female, or two.

Every issue, the characters and I duke it out. They usually win.

I write the book for one person — for Fiona [Staples, the artist]. I spend a lot of time just thinking how she'll react to things and manipulating her into drawing perverse, horrific things. It's a really weird job but I enjoy it.