Alan Moore Quotes - Page 4

There's no such thing as quitting. Just sometimes there's a longer pause between relapses.

Never despair. Never surrender.

The roots of the word 'anarchy' are 'an archos,' 'no leaders,' which is not really about the kind of chaos that most people imagine when the word 'anarchy' is mentioned. I think that anarchy is, to the contrary, about taking personal responsibility for yourself.

What does fighting crime mean, exactly? Does it mean upholding the law when a woman shoplifts to feed her children, or does it mean struggling to uncover the ones who, quite legally, have brought about her poverty?

Everybody has their story to tell.

There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.

If I have to have a past, then I prefer it to be multiple choice.

I didn't put you in a prison, Evey. I just showed you the bars.

On my fortieth birthday, rather than merely bore my friends by having anything as mundane as a midlife crisis I decided it might be more interesting to actually terrify them by going completely mad and declaring myself to be a magician.

I didn't really sign up to be a celebrity, I only signed up to be a writer.

Who makes the world? Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. Perhaps it simply is, has been, will always be there…a clock without a craftsman.

Who imprisoned me here? Who keeps me here? Who can release me? Who's controlling and constraining my life except...me?

Magic is a state of mind. It is often portrayed as very black and gothic, and that is because certain practitioners played that up for a sense of power and prestige. That is a disservice. Magic is very colorful. Of this, I am sure.

To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate - unlike most films.

Anarchy wears two faces, both Creator and Destroyer. Thus Destroyers topple empires; make a canvas of clean rubble where creators can then build a better world. Rubble, once achieved makes further ruins' means irrelevant. Away with our explosives, then! Away with our Destroyers! They have no place within our better world. But let us raise a toast to all our bombers, all our bastards, most unlovely and most unforgivable, let's drink their health, then meet with them no more.

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.

I should just keep me mouth shut, I just upset people.

Through my blue fingers, pink grains are falling, haphazard, random, a disorganized stream of silicone that seems pregnant with the possibility of every conceivable shape… But this is illusion. Things have their shape in time, not space alone. Some marble blocks have statues within them, embedded in their future.

...My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was. I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you?

Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. Forever.

It does not do to rely too much on silent majorities, Evey, for silence is a fragile thing, one loud noise, and its gone. But the people are so cowed and disorganised. A few might take the opportunity to protest, but it'll just be a voice crying in the wilderness. Noise is relative to the silence preceding it. The more absolute the hush, the more shocking the thunderclap. Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations, Evey and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.

The only reality we can ever truly know is that of our perceptions, our own consciousness, while that consciousness, and thus our entire reality, is made of nothing but signs and symbols. Nothing but language. Even God requires language before conceiving the Universe. See Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word.

We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.

Perhaps this is the purpose of all art, all writing, on the murders, fiction and non-fiction: Simply to participate.

It's funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style. You look at old photographs and everybody has a certain look to them, almost as if they're related. Look at pictures from ten years later and you can see that there's a new kind of face starting to predominate, and that the old faces are fading away and vanishing, never to be seen again.