"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

"People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people."
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

"Looked into the sky, heavy with smoke and human fat, and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. It is not God that kills the children, not fate the butchers them, nor destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"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 (Batman: The Killing Joke)

"Ideas are bulletproof."
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

"RORSCHACH:

Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.
Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there.
The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later.
Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion.
There is nothing else."
— Alan Moore (Absolute Watchmen)

"No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise."
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.

Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.

Was Rorschach.

Does that answer your Questions, Doctor?"
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"That pompous phrase (graphic novel) was thought up by some idiot in the marketing department of DC. I prefer to call them Big Expensive Comics."
— Alan Moore

"My mother said I broke her heart...but it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us...but within that inch we are free."
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

"Rorschach's Journal. October 12th, 1985:

Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.

The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown.

The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"...

...and I'll look down and whisper "No.""
— Alan Moore

"Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci.""
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"I think that storytelling and creation are very close to what the center of what magic is about. I think not just for me, but for most of the cultures that have had a concept of magic, then the manipulation of language, and words, and thus of stories and fictions, has been very close to the center of it all."
— Alan Moore

"VI VERI VENIVERSUM VIVUS VICI"
- "By the Power of Truth, I, while living, have Conquered the Universe". -V"
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

"Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof."
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

"Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious."
— Alan Moore

"The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists . . . all the whores and politicians will look up and shout, 'Save us,' and I'll look down and whisper, 'No.'"
— Alan Moore (Absolute Watchmen)

"You know what I wish? I wish all the scum of the Earth had one throat and I had my hands about it."
— Alan Moore (Absolute Watchmen)

"Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself. "
— Alan Moore

"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

"All we ever see of stars are their old photographs."
— Alan Moore

"None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with YOU. You're locked up in here with ME."
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"Look at him now, poor fellow. That's what a dose of reality does for you...Never touch the stuff myself, you understand. Find it gets in the way of the hallucinations."
— Alan Moore

"But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget ... I forget. 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. Come... dry your eyes, 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. Dry your eyes. And let's go home."
— Alan Moore (Absolute Watchmen)

"Evey Hammond: Who are you?
V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
Evey Hammond: Well I can see that.
V: Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is"
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

"Whatever happened to the American dream? It came true. You're lookin' at it."
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"Rorschach: This city is dying of rabies. Is the best I can do to wipe random flecks of foam from its lips?"
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. Farewell."
— Alan Moore

"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."
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"Eve: All this riot and uproar, V... is this Anarchy? Is this the Land of Do-As-You-Please?

V: No. This is only the land of take-what-you-want. Anarchy means "without leaders", not "without order". With anarchy comes an age or ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order... this age of ordung will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle of verwirrung that these bulletins reveal has run its course... This is not anarchy, Eve. This is chaos."
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

"God is in the Rain."
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

"There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet."
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.
And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!.

Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come...dry your eyes. 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. Dry your eyes... and let's go home. "
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"In order to be able to make it, you have to put aside the fear of failing and the desire of succeeding. You have to do these things completely and purely without fear, without desire. Because things that we do without lust of result are the purest actions we shall ever take."
— Alan Moore

"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."
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"“Don't leave home without your sword - your intellect.”"
— Alan Moore

"Swamp Thing, in Hell: "Demon...How...could God...allow such a place?

Etrigan: Think you God built this place, wishing man ill and not lusts uncontrolled or swords unsheathed?

Not God, my friend. The truth's more hideous still: These halls were carved by men while yet they breathed.

God is no parent or policeman grim dispensing treats or punishments to all.

Each soul climbs or descends by its own whim. He mourns, but He cannot prevent their fall.

We suffer as we choose. Nothing's amiss. All torments are deserved..."
— Alan Moore (Swamp Thing Vol. 2: Love and Death)

"We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come, dry your eyes. 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."
— Alan Moore (Absolute Watchmen)

"Much of magic as I understand it in the Western occult tradition is the search for the Self, with a capital S. This is understood as being the Great Work, as being the gold the alchemists sought, as being the Will, the Soul, the thing we have inside us that is behind the intellect, the body, the dreams. The inner dynamo of us, if you like. Now this is the single most important thing that we can ever attain, the knowledge of our own Self. And yet there are a frightening amount of people who seem to have the urge not just to ignore the Self, but actually seem to have the urge to obliterate themselves. This is horrific, but you can almost understand the desire to simply wipe out that awareness, because it’s too much of a responsibility to actually posses such a thing as a soul, such a precious thing. What if you break it? What if you lose it? Mightn’t it be best to anesthetize it, to deaden it, to destroy it, to not have to live with the pain of struggling towards it and trying to keep it pure? I think that the way that people immerse themselves in alcohol, in drugs, in television, in any of the addictions that our culture throws up, can be seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy any connection between themselves and the responsibility of accepting and owning a higher Self and then having to maintain it."
— Alan Moore

"If light is outlawed, then only outlaws will be able to see where they're going."
— Alan Moore (Tomorrow Stories)

"Doctor Manhattan: A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?"
— Alan Moore (Absolute Watchmen)

"Well, what do you expect? The Comedian is dead."
— Alan Moore (Absolute Watchmen)

"Heard a joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says "But, doctor...I am Pagliacci." Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains. Fade to black."
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"HYDE
I thought as much. Miss Murray, though I am a beast, do not think that I am stupid. I know that I am hideous and hateful. I am not loved, nor ever hope to be. Nor am I fool enough to think that what I feel for you is love.
But in this world, alone, I do not hate you. And alone in this world, you do not hate me."
— Alan Moore

"In order to be able to make it, you have to put aside the fear of failing and the desire of succeeding. You have to do these things completely and purely without fear, without desire. Because things that we do without lust or result are the purest actions we shall ever take."
— Alan Moore

"All we ever see of stars are their old photographs."
— Alan Moore

"This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us. -Rorschach."
— Alan Moore (Absolute Watchmen)

"There are people.

There are stories.

The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse if often closer to the truth.

Stories shape the world. They exist independently of people, and in places quite devoid of man, there may yet be mythologies."
— Alan Moore (Swamp Thing Vol. 2: Love and Death)

"Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it's seldom when anything ever really gets resolved. It's taken me a long time to realize that."
— Alan Moore

"If you wear black, then kindly, irritating strangers will touch your arm consolingly and inform you that the world keeps on turning.

They're right. It does.

However much you beg it to stop.

It turns and lets grenadine spill over the horizon, sends hard bars of gold through my window and I wake up and feel happy for three seconds and then I remember.

It turns and tips people out of their beds and into their cars, their offices, an avalanche of tiny men and women tumbling through life...

All trying not to think about what's waiting at the bottom.

Sometimes it turns and sends us reeling into each other's arms. We cling tight, excited and laughing, strangers thrown together on a moving funhouse floor.

Intoxicated by the motion we forget all the risks.

And then the world turns...

And somebody falls off...

And oh God it's such a long way down.

Numb with shock, we can only stand and watch as they fall away from us, gradually getting smaller...

Receding in our memories until they're no longer visible.

We gather in cemeteries, tense and silent as if for listening for the impact; the splash of a pebble dropped into a dark well, trying to measure its depth.

Trying to measure how far we have to fall.

No impact comes; no splash. The moment passes. The world turns and we turn away, getting on with our lives...

Wrapping ourselves in comforting banalities to keep us warm against the cold.

"Time's a great healer."

"At least it was quick."

"The world keeps turning."

Oh Alec

Alec's dead."
— Alan Moore (Swamp Thing Vol. 5: Earth to Earth)