Brian K. Vaughan Quotes

I've always thought of fantasy as a genre of best-case scenarios, and horror as a genre of worst-case scenarios.

If a good editor will let me tell my story with the right artist, I'm happy.

I mean, do you know what you get when you call a suicide hotline in New York city? A busy signal. Literally.

They hurt you. You hurt 'em back. Or maybe it is the other way around. Whatever. Someday you might find a way to forgive each other. But it won't be like it used to 'cause that pain never really goes away.

It's just people who grew up in that time are suddenly old enough to be creators themselves, but I think they have a little perspective. I'm 40 now, and I have children of my own. Before I forget my own childhood completely, I want to take some time to take a look at the '80s and think back.

We've all seen lots of stories about a young protagonist having adventures, and usually they're all boys, [and] there is sometimes a token female, or two.

It was interesting looking back at the '80s and trying to find newspaper headlines from the time - the cliché of history repeating itself.

For a lot of arcane shipping reasons, new comics, even digital ones, have a long history of only being released on Wednesdays.

I like things that are weirdly imaginative and couldn't be real, but I also like stories that are recognizable and relatable.

I love that the book [Paper Girls ] gets to kind of evolve and change in each era. Our third storyline is our best so far.

The appealing thing about comics: There literally is no budget in comics. You're only limited by your imagination.

Doesn't matter if it's personal or professional, a good partnership takes work.

I realized that for fantasy and science fiction, especially from my youth, white was the default. Luke Skywalker was in the lead, or even if you were a hobbit, you're going to be white. That was an extremely old-fashioned, obviously really narrow-minded way to look at things.

We're not trying to be deliberately frustrating, but we are laying the tracks for a mystery, and it's one that we have all figured out. We wanted this to be kind of like the way that Cliff [Chang] and I felt about the Cold War in the '80s when we were 12.

You'd never be able to convince someone to give you money to do a bilingual story where you're not translating half of it - you'd drive people crazy. But in comics, you can do whatever your heart desires.

How is it possible that our parents lied to us?" "Lets see: Santa, the Tooth Fairy,the Easter bunny,um, God. You're the prettiest kid in school. This wont hurt a bit. Your face will freeze like that..." "Everythings going to be alright.

Fans of my books have just been supremely nice.

Every issue, the characters and I duke it out. They usually win.

Sure, this will probably end up being another in a long line of emotionally crippling misadventures...but let's try to have some fun along the way.

Reef aquariums are definitely the pinnacle of the hobby.

That was the appealing thing about comics: There literally is no budget in comics. You're only limited by your imagination.

As you get older you start to see these events and leaders, and movements of the pendulum swinging back.

I've been fortunate enough to travel to comic conventions in Portugal, France, Canada, and it's an honor to get to meet people from all over the world.

Fantasy/science-fiction stories have been around almost as long as each genre, but every hybrid now lives in the shadow of 'Star Wars.'

Each collected edition of Paper Girls that we put out will largely be set in an entirely different era.

After 9/11, I knew I wanted to write about power and identity and the way Americans on all sides of the political spectrum often mythologize our leaders, which are themes that the superhero genre has always handled really well.

I've never gotten anything but support and thanks from people for having diverse books.

My mom once told me that a good relationship isn't where the other person makes you feel better, but where they make *you* better.

I've written about teenage heroes before, on Marvel's Runaways, and I remember at the time when I pitched it, it was a team that had more female members than males. Even that caused of much discussion about, "Will there be a market for this, and should there at least be equal number of male and females?"

There are only three forms of high art: the symphony, the illustrated children's book and the board game.

I remember seeing Stand by Me, when I was around 12, and just feeling like, "This is so refreshing to see kids swear and smoke cigarettes like my friends." It just felt much more real than the Sesame Street version of childhood that I'd been spoon-fed.

Victor: You guys have some kind of rallying cry? You know, "Avengers assemble?" "It's clobberin' time?" "Hulk smash?" Nico: "Try not to die.

Comics are essentially films with fewer frames per second.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.

There are a lot of differing opinions on that. Some people think you should change out more, but I think changing just 20 percent is less stressful on the aquarium and fish. Once you get used to the regimen, it's pretty easy.

But nothing warps time quite like childhood

Because it's in and about New York City, I knew 'Ex Machina' was going to have to continually mix the mundane and the fantastic.

Well, I always talk about how I used to work at an insane asylum and stuff, which is true, but to be honest, I just make crap up more than anything else.

There's a lot of dark stuff from the '80s that we don't think about.

There's just something about that late '80s that suddenly feels like it has something to teach us.

I think a lot of creators are attracted to those toys they got to play with when they were young, and everyone wants to write a Superman story or a Batman story or a Spider-Man story. I don't know, if it's been successful for me, it should be successful for anyone. "Hit the ground with your feet running" is the secret of breaking new characters when it seems like no one else is having any luck.

These are the young women [in Stand by Me] that we grew up knowing and hopefully they feel a little rough around the edges, because it's true to life.

My parents grew up during the space race, and I think they imagined the future would be us living on moon bases and everyone has rocket shoes.

Just go out there and get your heart broken in, so it'll be ready when you really need it.

In film, you have the luxury of accomplishing what you need in 24 frames every second. Comics, you only have five or six panels a page to do that.