My only problem with fans is when they turn pro. For example, when all the professional writers were fired by DC in the '60s, they brought in a generation of comic book fans who would have paid to have written these stories.
— Alan Moore
When I was working upon the ABC books, I wanted to show different ways that mainstream comics could viably have gone, that they didn't have to follow 'Watchmen' and the other 1980s books down this relentlessly dark route. It was never my intention to start a trend for darkness. I'm not a particularly dark individual.
On the one occasion where I did try writing a screenplay, I found the rewriting just unendurable.
I'm remote from most technology to the point that I'm kind of Amish.
You've got to be able to pay your bills; otherwise, you're not going to sleep at night. But beyond that, the world inside my head has always been a far richer place than the world outside it. I suppose that a lot of my art and writing are meant to bring the two together.
It is my belief that all gods are stories, or at least the ideas behind stories, but stories or ideas that have become in some way almost alive and aware.
I really can't be bothered going to a barber. And shaving every morning, that's nightmarish. I spent my teenage years covered in tiny little bits of toilet paper.
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.
I've had years of bizarre hallucinogenic magical experiences in which I believed I had communicated with entities that may well have been disassociated parts of my own personality or conceivably some independent entity of a metaphysical nature. Both would seem equally interesting.
If you're going to have any kind of political opposition in the 21st century, then it has to be as fundamentally liquid as the rapidly changing society we're living in.
People have asked me why I made the first chapter of my first novel so long, and in an invented English. The only answer I can come up with that satisfies me is, 'To keep out the scum.'
I've never studied anything formally. I was excluded from school at the age of 17, so I am an autodidact, which is a word that I have taught myself.
There are two worlds we live in: a material world, bound by the laws of physics, and the world inside our mind, which is just as important.
I was kind of a selfish child, who always wanted things his way, and I've kind of taken that over into my relationship with the world.
I think that in an increasingly virtual world, lovingly produced artefacts are at a premium.
There has been a rather unpleasant sensibility apparent in Frank Miller's work for quite a long time.
As far as I can see, it's not important that we have free will, just as long as we have the illusion of free will to stop us going mad.
I genuinely like the people I meet at signings or the bits of public talking that I do.
I didn't really sign up to be a celebrity, I only signed up to be a writer.
Despite the constant clamor for attention from the modern world, I do believe we need to procure a psychological space for ourselves. I apparently know some people who try to achieve this by logging off or going without their Twitter or Facebook for a limited period.
Do I believe, for example, that by using magic I could fly? No. How would you get around gravity? Impossible. Do I believe that I might be able to project my consciousness into a very, very vivid simulation of flying? Yeah. Yes, I've done that. Yes, that works.
I like Jacques Derrida; I think he's funny. I like my philosophy with a few jokes and puns. I know that that offends other philosophers; they think he's not taking things seriously, but he comes up with some marvellous puns. Why shouldn't you have a bit of fun while dealing with the deepest issues of the mind?
One of the advantages of travelling the world is that you get to know the world broadly. And one of the advantages of staying in one place is that you get to know the world deeply.
If the audience knew what they wanted then they wouldn't be the audience, they would be the artist.
The Conservative Party is a religion in that they are bound together by belief. Almost any organization has its religious aspects.
I think there's always been a traditionally apocalyptic side to British science fiction, from H.G. Wells onwards. I mean, most of Wells' stories are potentially apocalyptic in some sense or another.
As people get more desperate, history suggests that they're not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They're gonna turn on each other.
One of the reasons why I don't leave Northampton is that the people don't treat me like a celebrity. I've been here for years; I'm just that bloke with long hair.
Right from the outset, the prevailing mindset in British comics fandom was a radical and progressive one. We were all proto-hippies, and we all thought that comics would be greatly improved if everything was a bit psychedelic like Jim Steranko.
I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who's too big to fail.
When I started writing comics, 'comics writer' was the most obscure job in the world! If I wanted to be a celebrity, I would have become a moody English screen actor.
London has been used as the emblematic English city, but it's far from representative of what life in England is actually about.
I love the smell of paper in the morning; it smells like victory.
A lot of people have found the idea of living your life over and over again absolutely terrifying; there's some people that find it very comforting. There are others that are appalled by it.
I'm very distanced from the comics industry. I love the comics medium, but I have no time for the industry.
I could never be the kind of writer who went to the set of the movie and fussed and fretted about, 'Oh, that dialogue's wrong,' or 'That character doesn't look like that.' That would be insufferable.
Technology is always a two-edged sword. It will bring in many benefits, but also many disasters.
Growing up in the Boroughs, I thought I must be the cleverest boy in the world, an illusion that I was able to maintain until I got to the grammar school.
My main point about films is that I don't like the adaptation process, and I particularly don't like the modern way of comic book-film adaptations, where, essentially, the central characters are just franchises that can be worked endlessly to no apparent point.
I enjoy putting my mind into different situations rather than my body.
All culture must have arisen from cult.
Everything you've ever read of mine is first-draft. This is one of the peculiarities of the comics field. By the time you're working on chapter three of your masterwork, chapter one is already in print. You can't go back and suddenly decide to make this character a woman, or have this one fall out of a window.
In the sixties, for anybody to suggest that the government didn't have our best interests at heart and policemen sometimes killed people would have automatically made them a radical firebrand lefty. That's not the case anymore.
Money's fine if it enables you to enjoy your life and to be useful to other people. But as something that is a means to an end, no, it's useless.
Art makes us feel less alone. It makes us think: somebody else has thought this, somebody else has had these feelings.
When alchemists were talking about turning lead to gold, they were talking about turning a leaden consciousness, which most of us exist in during our lives, into a golden consciousness, which is a much better place to be.
I suppose when I was writing 'V for Vendetta' I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: 'Wouldn't it be great if these ideas actually made an impact?' So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world... It's peculiar.
In many ways, my entire graphic novel career was a long diversion. Originally, all I wanted to do was to be an underground cartoonist and maybe bring out a groovy underground mag.
I suppose all fictional characters, especially in adventure or heroic fiction, at the end of the day are our dreams about ourselves. And sometimes they can be really revealing.
I find that if I'm watching somebody upon television or in a movie that is on a window ledge or in some high precarious position my hand starts sweating and I get that crawling feeling in the soles of my feet.
