Alan Moore Quotes

I am brother to dragons, and companion to owls. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.

I don’t think people realise how vital libraries are or what a colossal danger it would be if we were to lose any more. Having had a truncated school life myself, all of my education from the age of 17 has been self-taught. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for the opportunities the library gave me.

It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace. This dichotomy is not an invention of the twentieth century, yet it is in this century that the most striking examples of the phenomena have appeared. Never before has man pursued global harmony more vocally while amassing stockpiles of weapons so devastating in their effect. The second world war - we were told - was The War to End All Wars. The development of the atomic bomb is the Weapon to End Wars.

And yet wars continue. Currently, no nation on this planet is not involved in some form of armed struggle, if not against its neighbors then against internal forces. Furthermore, as ever-escalating amounts of money are poured into the pursuit of the specific weapon or conflict that will bring lasting peace, the drain on our economies creates a rundown urban landscape where crime flourishes and people are concerned less with national security than with the simple personal security needed to stop at the store late a night for a quart of milk without being mugged. The places we struggled so viciously to keep safe are becoming increasingly dangerous. The wars to end wars, the weapons to end wars, these things have failed us.

It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need.

For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.

When the gap between the world of the city and the world my grandfather had presented to me as right and good became too wide and depressing to tolerate, I'd turn to my other great love, which was pulp adventure fiction. Despite the fact that [he] would have had nothing but scorn and loathing for all of those violent and garish magazines, there was a sort of prevailing morality in them that I'm sure he would have responded to. The world of Doc Savage and The Shadow was one of absolute values, where what was good was never in the slightest doubt and where what was evil inevitably suffered some fitting punishment. The notion of good and justice espoused by Lamont Cranston with his slouch hat and blazing automatics seemed a long way from that of the fierce and taciturn old man I remembered sitting up alone into the Montana night with no company save his bible, but I can't help feeling that if the two had ever met they'd have found something to talk about. For my part, all those brilliant and resourceful sleuths and heroes offered a glimpse of a perfect world where morality worked the way it was meant to. Nobody in Doc Savage's world ever killed themselves except thwarted kamikaze assassins or enemy spies with cyanide capsules. Which world would you rather live in, if you had the choice?

For whatever the future holds, one thing is certain... It just won't be the same.

The clothes you're wearing, the room, the house, the city that you're in. Everything in it started out in the human imagination. Your lives, your personalities, your whole world. All invented. All made up. All the wars, the romances. The masterpieces and the machines. And there's nothing here but a funny little twist of amino acids, playing a marvelous game of pretend.

In 1965, worked with Nite Owl bringing street gangs under control. Tackled the Big Figure together. Brought down Underboss together. Good team.

Until he got soft, like rest. Until he quit.

No staying power. None of them. Except Comedian. Met him in 1966. Forceful personality. Didn't care if people liked him. Uncompromising. Admired that.

Of us all, he understood most. About world. About people. About society and what's happening to it.

Things everyone knows in gut. Things everyone too scared to face, too polite to talk about. He understood.

Understood man's capacity for horrors and never quit. Saw the world's black underbelly and never surrendered. Once man has seen, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend it doesn't exist.

No matter who orders him to look the other way.

We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to.

We do it because we are compelled.

I'm the idea of the human imagination, which, when you think about it, is the only thing we can really be certain ISN'T imaginary.

Dr. Malcolm Long: Walter, is what happened to Kitty Genovese really proof that the whole of mankind is rotten? I think you've been conditioned with a negative worldview. There are good people, too, like...

Rorschach: Like you?

Dr. Malcolm Long: Me? Oh, well, I wouldn't say that. I...

Rorschach: No. You just think it. Think you're 'good people'. Why are you spending so much time with me, Doctor?

Dr. Malcolm Long: Uh...well, because I care about you, and because I want to make you well...

Rorschach: Other people, down in cells. Behavior more extreme than mine. You don't spend any time with them...but then, they're not famous. Won't get your name in the journals. You don't want to make me well. Just want to know what makes me sick. You'll find out. Have patience, Doctor. You'll find out.

I have so very much. I have so very little.

Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon.

You see, there's the way things seemed and then there's the way things were and one is so often the total reverse of the other.

"I'm not exactly sure what happened. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!" ~ JOKER