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Alan Moore

138 quotes

“It struck me that it might be interesting for once to do an almost blue-collar warlock. Somebody who was streetwise, working class, and from a different background than the standard run of comic book mystics. Constantine started to grow out of that.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the creation of the character John Constantine in Swamp Thing, as quoted in "The Unexplored Medium" in Wizard Magazine (November 1993); the character he created later appeared in other works, including Books of Magic…
“I'm not a millionaire but I'm very comfortable doing what I do, and I'm more productive now than I was in my mid-20s. It's all down to functionality eventually. If you're functional it doesn't matter if you're mad.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Moore's murderer", in The Guardian (2 February 2002)
“Yes, there is a conspiracy, in fact there are a great number of conspiracies that are all tripping each other up. And all of those conspiracies are run by paranoid fantasists and ham-fisted clowns. If you are on a list targeted by the CIA, you really have nothing to worry about. If however, you have a name similar to somebody on a list targeted by the CIA, then you are dead.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Mindscape of Alan Moore" (2003)
“I've no objection to the term 'graphic novel,' as long as what it is talking about is actually some sort of graphic work that could conceivably be described as a novel. My main objection to the term is that usually it means a collection of six issues of Spider-Man, or something that does not have the structure or any of the qualities of a novel, but is perhaps roughly the same size.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Locus Magazine (2003)
“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12-foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Mindscape of Alan Moore" (2003)
“Truth is a well-known pathological liar. It invariably turns out to be Fiction wearing a fancy frock. Self-proclaimed Fiction, on the other hand, is entirely honest. You can tell this, because it comes right out and says, "I'm a Liar," right there on the dust jacket.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In "Correspondence: From Hell" Alan Moore & Dave Sim, part 3, Cerebus #219, (2003)
“Admittedly, I do have several bones... whole war fields full of bones, in fact... to pick with organised religion of whatever stripe. This should be seen as a critique of purely temporal agencies who have, to my mind, erected more obstacles between whatever notion of spirituality and Godhead one subscribes to than they have opened doors. To me, the difference between Godhead and the Church is the difference between Elvis and Colonel Parker... although that conjures images of God dying on the toilet, which is not what I meant at all.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In "Correspondence: From Hell" by Alan Moore & Dave Sim, conclusion, Cerebus #220 (2003)
“Most of the people who get sent to die in wars are young men who've got a lot of energy and would probably rather, in a better world, be putting that energy into copulation rather than going over there and blowing some other young man's guts out.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Craft" - interview with Daniel Whiston, Engine Comics (January 2005)
“Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Mustard magazine interview" (January 2005)
“The DC comics were always a lot more true blue. Very enjoyable, but they were big, brave uncles and aunties who probably insisted on a high standard of you know mental and physical hygiene. Whereas the Stan Lee stuff, the Marvel comics, he went from one-dimensional characters whose only characteristic was they dressed up in costumes and did good. Whereas Stan Lee had this huge breakthrough of two-dimensional characters. So, they dress up in costumes and do good, but they've got a bad heart. Or a bad leg. I actually did think for a long while that having a bad leg was an actual character trait.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview on BBC Radio 4 (27 January 2005)
“I despise the comic industry, but I will always love the comic medium.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: New York Press interview (15 June 2006)
“If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation. When you've got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong. To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sex is glorious, it's how we all got here, and it's most people's favourite activity.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I saw no reason why you couldn't create a work of pornography that adhered to all the same standards as the best art or literature. The big difference between art and pornography is that art, at its best, makes you feel less alone. You see a painting or read a piece of writing that expresses a thought that you had but didn't express, and you suddenly feel less alone. Pornography, on the other hand, tends to engender feelings of self-disgust, isolation and wretchedness. I wanted to change that.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sexually progressive cultures gave us mathematics, literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust. Not that I’m trying to load my argument, of course.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: BOG VENUS VERSUS NAZI COCK-RING: Some Thoughts Concerning Pornography" in Arthur magazine, Vol. 1, No. 25 (November 2006)
“There is an inverse relationship between imagination and money.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I did an interview where I was asked for the best advice I'd been given. I couldn't think of anything, so I read from the back of a packet of Swan Vestas matches by the phone: "Keep in a dry place, keep away from children and strike gently away from the body." They'd written it up without any sense of irony.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Metro interview (10 October 2011)
“I suppose that the main drive is to find the edge of something and then throw myself over it.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the issue of creativity, from the interview with Channel 4, "V for Vendetta: the man behind the mask" (11 January 2012)
“Now they’re called ‘graphic novels’, which sounds sophisticated and you can charge a lot more for them. What appealed to me most about comics is no more, and these innocent and inventive and imaginative superhero characters from the ’40s, ‘50s, ‘60s are being recycled to a modern audience as if they were adult fare.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lisa Respers France, “‘Watchmen’s’ Alan Moore wants future royalties donated to Black Lives Matter”, CNN, (September 14, 2023); quoting Alan Moore as interviewed by Jake Kerridge , “Alan Moore interview: ‘I’m giving all…
“I didn’t mean my experiments with comics to be immediately taken up as something that the whole industry should do. When I was doing things like ‘Watchmen,’ I was not saying that dark psychopathic characters are really cool, but that does seem to be the message that the industry took for the next 20 years.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lisa Respers France, “‘Watchmen’s’ Alan Moore wants future royalties donated to Black Lives Matter”, CNN, (September 14, 2023); quoting Alan Moore as interviewed by Jake Kerridge , “Alan Moore interview: ‘I’m giving all…
“I don’t really feel, with the recent films, that they have stood by what I assumed were their original principles. So I asked for DC Comics to send all of the money from any future TV series or films to Black Lives Matter.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lisa Respers France, “‘Watchmen’s’ Alan Moore wants future royalties donated to Black Lives Matter”, CNN, (September 14, 2023); quoting Alan Moore as interviewed by Jake Kerridge , “Alan Moore interview: ‘I’m giving all…
“Maybe the world..has run out of room..for monsters.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a red and angry world... Red things happen there. The world eats your wife... Eats your friends... Eats all the things... that make you human... And you become a monster. And the world... just keeps on eating.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are people. There are stories. The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse is often closer to the truth.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Down Among the Dead Men", Swamp Thing Annual #2, 1985
“Murder? Don't talk to me about murder. I invented murder!”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can't kill a vegetable by shooting it in the head.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Once we were very different — our psyches constantly at war — [so] we struck a bargain, a spiritual compromise. We would grow more like each other, there would be a balance, but a bargain with a demon is no bargain at all. Demons cheat; it is their nature. Oh yes, I have grown more like Etrigan, and he… he too has grown more like Etrigan.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They were kept in the dark, squatting there with nothing to dwell upon beyond the fact they were unclean. Even the touch of their shadow would sour the land, blighting crops that grew there....At the end of their confinement they were led out blinking into the harsh and masculine glare of the sun. Their clothing was taken from them and destroyed. Their anger in darkness turning, unreleased, unspoken, its mouth a red wound...”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a house above the world, where the over-people gather. There is a man with wings like a bird. There is a man who can see across the planet and wring diamonds from its anthracite. There is a man who moves so fast that his life is an endless gallery of statues. In the house above the world, the over-people gather... And sit... And listen... ...To a dry, mad voice that whispers of Earthdeath.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's a new world, Arcane... It's full of shopping malls... and striplights and software. The dark corners are being pushed back... a little more every day. We're things of the shadow, you and I... And there isn't as much shadow... as there used to be..”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to pretend it looked like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn’t. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that is avoiding the real horror. The horror is this: In the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness. We are alone. There is nothing else.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We’re all puppets, Laurie. I’m just a puppet who can see the strings.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. Forever.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Memories so treacherous...”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jordan Elliot: What's for dinner?”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There is only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hollywood, television and film is not my prime area of interest. Because I would never have any control, working in those areas. It’s nice to get the money from a Hollywood project, but whatever they do with it, it would be their piece of work, and not mine.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a kind of synergy between the different forms of work, you’ll learn things from one sort of work that will have tremendous application in another. They all tend to pull each other forward.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have a more fractal way of working, if you like, it is more like the way most people’s minds actually work. They don’t work in any linear way. When your mind wanders if you ever pay attention to some of the paths it takes, you generally find it’s these paths of association that can link all over the place. …The movements of the mind don’t follow any linear pattern, they can’t be explained with a mechanistic, clockwork view. You could find quantum models of how the mind works that might fit.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All our scientific observations of the universe and quanta can only, in the end, be observations of ourselves.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are approaching a more fluid state. I have talked about cultural boiling. The idea of the phase-transition period which, in fractal mathematics, is the chaotic flux between one state and another. …Culturally, and as a species, we are approaching a phase-transition. I don’t know quite what that means, on a human level.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t know quite what I mean by my own metaphor, but I have feeling, it may bring in an even greater, faster space of fluid transmission, where no structures, as we used to understand structure, will sustain itself – we will have to come up with new notions of structure where things can change by the moment. I’m talking about physical structures, political structures, I can’t see coherent political structures in the traditional sense lasting beyond the next twenty years, I don’t think that would be possible.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mental space and its existence is what makes things like remote viewing possible. There shouldn’t be any limit to it. As I understand mental space, one of the differences between it and physical space, is that there is no space in it. All the distances are associative. In the real world, Land's End and John O’Groats are famously far apart. Yet you can’t say one without thinking of the other. In conceptual space they are right next to one another. Distances can only be associative, even vast interstellar distances shouldn’t be a problem. Time would also function like this.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I like a film where you can see every penny of the budget up there on the screen.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The K Foundation are interesting and lively, a good laugh and they mean it. They are very dedicated to their irrational ideas, which I am wholeheartedly in favour of. …There is an underground again. Probably kill it stone dead to call it that. But I get the sense that there is an underground again, it’s not as self-conscious as it was in the Sixties.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are all the aggregate of the ideas about us, including our own ideas about us. That is all that any of us can be considered as – units of information in a sea of information. When you get to a certain point, there is not much more to it than information. <!-- Which for our terms is practically synonymous with language, because that is the only way we understand information, in one sort of language or another.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Take disintegration far enough and you get a new form of integration. I tend to see all this in neural terms. It doesn’t matter how big your brain is, or how many cells or neurons in it, what matters is the synaptic fusions, the connections that determine how intelligent you are. As with the individual, so with the macrocosm. That’s how the kind of society I live in works, me and my friends and my contacts, we don’t work in any hierarchical sense. No one wants a boss, to be a boss, to work under a boss. The people you like working with are the people you respect as individuals.”
Alan Moore (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source