100 Thought-Provoking Quotes By Alan Moore, The Renowned English Comic Writer

My dear, beautiful and imaginative things can be destroyed. Beauty and imagination cannot.

  

They offered you a choice between the death of your principles and the death of your body. You said you'd rather die. You faced the fear of your own death, and you were calm and still.

  

Things are tough all over, cupcake, an' it rains on the just an' the unjust alike...except in California.

  

Sex is glorious, it's how we all got here, and it's most people's favourite activity.

  

The superman exists and he's American.

  

It's cold and it's mean spirited and I don't like it here anymore.

  

A world grows up around me. Am I shaping it, or do its predetermined contours guide my hand?

  

By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.

  

I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell.

  

Does the human heart know chasms so abysmal?

  

Truly, whoever we are, wherever we reside, we exist upon the whim of murderers.

  

I thought, "Well if I'm gonna react might as well overreact!

  

We are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later.

  

The multiplying villainies of nature do swarm upon him... [from Macbeth]

  

...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?

  

The 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.

  

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.

  

Me? I'm the king of the twentieth century. I'm the bogeyman. The villain...The black sheep of the family.

  

They say we have we created the man to end all wars; I say we have created a man to end all worlds.

  

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who watches the watchmen?

  

The dusk reeks of fornication and bad consciences.

  

I'm 65 years old. Everyday the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time.

  

Nothing is insoluble. Nothing is hopeless. Not while there's life.

  

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

  

Nothing's that simple, not even things that are simply awful.

  

If light is outlawed, then only outlaws will be able to see where they're going.

  

Roses are red Violets are blue Everything's possible Nothing is true.

  

Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.

  

How can two people hate so much without knowing each other?

  

This city is dying of rabies. Is the best I can do to wipe random flecks of foam from its lips?

  

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.

  

There is no coincidence. Only the illusion of coincidence.

  

Please don't worry. It's a psychological complaint, common amongst ex-librarians. You see, she thinks she's a coffee table edition...

  

IF YOU HURT INSIDE, GET CERTIFIED, AND IF LIFE SHOULD TREAT YOU BAD... DON'T GET EE-EE-EVEN, GET MAD!

  

Never despair. Never surrender.

  

Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.

  

It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?

  

While a truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.

  

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

  

Don't leave home without your sword - your intellect.

  

I love you, but why must you love the law? 'Tis plain for all to see that she's a whore...that virtuous persons have no need to woo; that villains screw, then studiously ignore.

  

American love — like coke in green glass bottles...they don't make it anymore.

  

I'm the king of the 20th century. I'm the boogeyman, the villian, the black sheep of the family.

  

Who? Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask.

  

I live my life free of compromise, and step into the shadows without complaint or regret.

  

There, did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. Farewell.

  

The world's a stage, & everything else is Vaudeville.

  

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

  

Is it meaningless to apologize? Never.

  

Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away…forever." The Joker

  

Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.

  

As I see it, part of the art of being a hero is knowing when you don't need to be one anymore.

  

With so much chaos, someone will do something stupid. And when they do, things will turn nasty

  

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?

  

No one will ever forget that night, and what it meant for this country. But I will never forget the man and what he meant to me.

  

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.

  

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.

  

Everybody has their story to tell.

  

We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.

  

Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured. Twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss.

  

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

  

You know what I wish? I wish all the scum of the Earth had one throat and I had my hands about it.

  

Nite Owl II: But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to America? What's happened to the American dream? The Comedian: It came true. You're lookin' at it.

  

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.

  

Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.

  

Equality and freedom are not luxuries to lightly cast aside. Without them, order cannot long endure before approaching depths beyond imagining.

  

Why do we argue? Life's so fragile, a successful virus clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.

  

Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.

  

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.

  

The ending is nearer than you think, and it is already written. All that we have left to choose is the correct moment to begin.

  

We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.

  

Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.

  

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

  

Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes.

  

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.

  

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

  

VI VERI VENIVERSUM VIVUS VICI. By the Power of Truth, I, while living, have Conquered the Universe.

  

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.

  

So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit.

  

There's a notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridiculous. There is no ordinary person.

  

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.

  

Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.

  

It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses, and apologized to no one.

  

The past can't hurt you anymore. Not unless you let it. They made you into a victim, Evey. They made you into a statistic. But, that's not the real you. That's not who you are inside.

  

No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.

  

Love your rage, not your cage.

  

They say that life's a game, & then they take the board away.

  

None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with YOU. You're locked up in here with ME.

  

God is in the rain.

  

All we ever see of stars are their old photographs.

  

Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.

  

Remember, remember the fifth of November of gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason should ever be forgot.

  

Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.

  

The past can't hurt you anymore, not unless you let it.

  

You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.

  

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

  

Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell.

  

Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof.

  

People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.

  

My experience of life is that it is not divided up 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.