Grant Morrison > Quotes

“Enough madness? Enough? And how do you measure madness? - The Joker”
― Grant Morrison, Batman: Arkham Asylum

“Your head's like mine, like all our heads; big enough to contain every god and devil there ever was. Big enough to hold the weight of oceans and the turning stars. Whole universes fit in there! But what do we choose to keep in this miraculous cabinet? Little broken things, sad trinkets that we play with over and over. The world turns our key and we play the same little tune again and again and we think that tune's all we are.”
― Grant Morrison, The Invisibles, Vol. 1: Say You Want a Revolution

“Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases.”
― Grant Morrison, The Filth

“Talking to oneself, I have often thought, is the best way to be sure of intelligent and witty conversation.”
― Grant Morrison, Sebastian O

“Only nothing is impossible.”
― Grant Morrison

“Sometimes it’s only madness that makes us what we are.”
― Grant Morrison, Batman: Arkham Asylum

“From now on, I'm opting for ontological terrorism.”
― Grant Morrison, The Invisibles, Vol. 6: Kissing Mister Quimper

“I run blindly through the madhouse ... And I cannot even pray ... For I have no God.”
― Grant Morrison, Batman: Arkham Asylum

“I couldn't think of one clever way to stop this guy, so I just trusted to mindless violence.”
― Grant Morrison, Doom Patrol, Vol. 1: Crawling from the Wreckage

“It's quite possible we may actually be looking at some kind of super-sanity here. A brilliant new modification of human perception, more suited to urban life at the end of the twentieth century...He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the lord of misrule and the world as a theatre of the absurd.”
― Grant Morrison, Batman: Arkham Asylum

“Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human

“We're the new power, come to replace the old. Cameras in the head, children with microchips, spin doctors rewriting reality as it happens. ”
― Grant Morrison

“Hell is only the Cringe Eternal and the Place of our Self's Undoing. When Nietzsche proclaimed "God is Dead!" he forgot to add that Satan is also dead and we are free from all that antique tat.”
― Grant Morrison

“Because it all derived from Superman. I mean, I love all the characters, but Superman is just this perfect human pop-culture distillation of a really basic idea. He's a good guy. He loves us. He will not stop in defending us. How beautiful is that? He's like a sci-fi Jesus. He'll never let you down. And only in fiction can that guy actually exist, because real guys will always let you down one way or another. We actually made up an idea that beautiful. That's just cool to me. We made a little paper universe where all of the above is true.”
― Grant Morrison

“One must commit acts of the highest treason only when dressed in the most resplendent finery.”
― Grant Morrison, Sebastian O

“He read me extracts from a medical journal describing the progress of a staphylococcus aureus infection. And then he pleasured me with a potato.”
― Grant Morrison

“Sometimes you wonder, in an interconnected universe, who's dreaming who?”
― Grant Morrison, Animal Man, Vol. 2: Origin of the Species

“Abandon the 'I', because it's a lie.”
― Grant Morrison

“There's a palace in your head, boy. Learn to live in it always.”
― Grant Morrison, The Invisibles, Vol. 1: Say You Want a Revolution

“Imagine the earth’s population of six billion people reduced to just one hundred representatives. Statistically, that makes 30 white, 70 non-white. It means 6 people own 59% of the wealth and they all live in North America. 80 are in substandard housing. One has an education. One owns a computer. Don’t blame me if it all sounds crazy.”
― Grant Morrison

“It's salt. Why don't you sprinkle some on me, honey? Aren't I just good enough to eat?”
― Grant Morrison, Batman: Arkham Asylum

“This is the end of our sentence”
― Grant Morrison

“I just wanted all the wars to be over so that we could spend the money on starships and Mars colonies.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human

“I’m a false icon! The media collaborate in promoting my superficial lifestyle as somehow more valid, more worthy of attention than your real lives! - Gideon Stargrave”
― Grant Morrison

“The only thing that made me, or any of us, special was that no one in the whole of history would ever see the universe exactly the same way any other of us saw it.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human

“When was the last time you had a thought that wasn't put there by THEM?”
― Grant Morrison, The Invisibles, Vol. 1: Say You Want a Revolution

“Kipling: Where's your sense of humor?
Rebis: We're working on reconstructing it...”
― Grant Morrison, Doom Patrol, Vol. 2: The Painting That Ate Paris

“The perfect fascist state needs to operate in conditions of perpetual warfare. Have you ever noticed how the world has been in constant crisis since World War II?”
― Grant Morrison, The Invisibles, Vol. 6: Kissing Mister Quimper

“Look at it, Dane. Look at the city and the world in its proud array, like a cask of jewels laid open for you. It'll offer you everything you ever wanted but it's just pictures on billboards; dream cars, dream women, dream houses.

Time to wake up now and say goodbye.

Remember, Dane: there's other worlds out there. It's only empty air here. Jump out of the world, jump to the place I showed you and you'll not fall.

Are you ready? Are you ready to jump right off the edge of everything?”
― Grant Morrison, The Invisibles, Vol. 3: Entropy in the U.K.

“The interior of our skulls contains a portal to infinity.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human

“I will rise from the darkness, shining like the morning star.

Illuminated woman am I.”
― Grant Morrison, The Invisibles, Vol. 1: Say You Want a Revolution

“I loved IRON MAN: Robert Downey Jr. has been and probably will be my favourite actor for a long time…but IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, SUPERMAN RETURNS and all the others feel a little like Saturday morning cartoons next to the carbon black glory that is 'The Dark Knight.'

Trust me, *this* is the future of this sort of thing.”
― Grant Morrison, JLA: The Deluxe Edition Vol. 1

“We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human

“I should say I am far more cleverer than any of the people who put me here. As a matter of fact, I could leave any time I wanted. It's only a doll house after all. Anyway, I don't mind. I like dolls.

Particularly the live ones.”
― Grant Morrison, Batman: Arkham Asylum

“Oh, yes! Fill the churches with dirty thoughts! Introduce honesty to the White House! Write letters in dead languages to people you've never met! Paint filthy words on the foreheads of children! Burn your credit cards and wear high heels! Asylum doors stand open! Fill the suburbs with murder and rape! Divine madness! Let there be ecstasy, ecstasy in the streets! Laugh and the world laughs with you!”
― Grant Morrison, Batman: Arkham Asylum

“Laugh and the world laughs with you!”
― Grant Morrison

“...A thought robot activated by the tremendous energies unleashed during collisions of fundamental opposing qualities. A new fusion process powered by... 'dualites'? No. There are no dualities. Only symmetries." Final Crisis: Superman Beyond”
― Grant Morrison, Final Crisis

“May in Varanasi. 25° and wet. It's like the 6th circle of the inferno here, Edith - where they flail the arses off the howling heretics and the men who fuck marine life etc. NATO's stomping on the Balkans while India and Pakistan threaten one another with nukes. "Dead From the Waist Down" on MTV. The humidity's making me horny and mad. I miss Robin. In his new book, Ken Wilbur calls it "skin hunger". I feel like I'm building up a charge. Monsoon's on its way.”
― Grant Morrison

“We tell our children they're trapped like rats on a doomed, bankrupt, gangster-haunted planet with dwindling resources, with nothing to look forward to but rising sea levels and imminent mass extinctions, then raise a disapproving eyebrow when, in response, they dress in black, cut themselves with razors, starve themselves, gorge themselves, or kill one another.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human

“It's stupid, I know, but I care. All the things that meant so much when we were young. Under the blankets late at night, listening to long-distance radio. All those things lost now or broken. Can you remember? Can you remember that feeling? Perhaps I ought to go to a doctor.”
― Grant Morrison, Animal Man, Vol. 3: Deus ex Machina

“Seven actors have played Batman on the big screen, and if you can name all seven without reading any further, your youth has been wasted.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human

“Doctor Doom was exactly the sort of bastard who would have armed al-Qaeda with death rays and killer robots if he thought for one second it would piss off the hated Reed Richards and the rest of his mortal enemies in the Fantastic Four, but here he was sobbing with the best of them, as representative not of evil, but of Marvel Comics' collective shock, struck dumb and moved to hand-drawn tears by the thought that anyone could hate America and its people enough to do this.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human

“Look at us! Are we not proof that there is no good, no evil, no truth, no reason? Are we not proof that the universe is a drooling idiot with no fashion sense - Mr Nobody on the fundamental philosophy of the Brotherhood of DADA”
― Grant Morrison, Doom Patrol, Vol. 2: The Painting That Ate Paris

“To know that we are only angels weighed down by filth, free of guilt? The bacteria in our bellies are responsible for the farts which shame us, tiny monsters shitting in their billions all over our pure skin create the acid reek of "our" sweat. And Slade: when the "inner voices" tell us we're unworthy or instruct us to "love" and "hate," despite our best instincts... are these incessant distracting thoughts our own? Or do we only hear the voice of the eternal germ screaming in our heads?”
― Grant Morrison, The Filth

“Animal Man: 'Listen, just tell me one thing: am I REAL or what?'

Grant Morrison: 'Of COURSE you're real! We wouldn't be here talking if you weren't real.

'You existed long before I wrote about you and, if you're lucky, you'll still be young when I'm old or dead.

'You're more real than I am.”
― Grant Morrison, Animal Man, Vol. 3: Deus ex Machina

“PHOENIX: As I was about to say… “Telekinesis” means “mind over matter.”

U-Men: I’m not scared… I’ll match your natural powers with my electric blood transfusion.

PHOENIX: No… No. I’m sorry, you won’t. All your minds… looking out through those little portholes… Naked insecurities crawling all over you like graffiti… So sad… You’ll be quiet and you’ll listen to someone else for just 5 minutes. Mind over matter? Think back to all that processed food you ate today to help calm your nerves. I’m thinking about it right now. I’m thinking of moving it up.

U-Men: Aaautch! Bblaaauuurrr!

PHOENIX: And moving it down.

U-Men: Oh! Awwwww!

PHOENIX: I don’t want you to get hurt but you have to understand… the more you annoy me the more I can’t help thinking about deconstructing you, molecule by molecule, memory by memory… until there’s nothing left but screaming, traumatized atoms. So don’t patronize me. Don’t threaten me. And don’t ever endanger any of my students again. Don’t even think about it. Or I’ll know.”
― Grant Morrison

“mmmmen stink! bossss stink! hungry”
― Grant Morrison, We3

“It's not so much that history is simply cyclical, it seems to progress via recursive, repeated fractal patterns with minute variations.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human

“We've always known we'd eventually be called upon to open our shirts and save the day, and the superhero was a crude, hopeful attempt to talk about how we all might feel on that day of great power, and great responsibility.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human

“If this book has made any point clear, I hope it's that things don't have to be real to be true. Or vice versa.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human