Joss Whedon Quotes

I don't want to create responsible shows with lawyers in them. I want to invade people's dreams.

Those of us who write spend our entire lives in an endless English class.

How do you know your Colossus is the genuine article in the first place? I read his mind. I matched his DNA. I smelled him. I also did that.

My visions of the future are always pretty much standard issue. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and there are flying cars.

I believe we are the only sentient beings in the universe, and I believe that 500 years from now, we will still be the only sentient beings around.

Don't give me songs, give me something to sing about!

I get recognized just often enough to keep my ego bouncing along, but not so much that I can't go places.

You know, the thing that I do to waste time is think of things I want to make. That's how my mind is employed.

If I wrote what I really think, I would be so sad all the time. We create to fill a gap - not just to avoid the idea of dying, it's to fill some particular gap in ourselves.

Very occasionally, if you pay really close attention, life doesn't suck.

I'm working on 'Buffy: Deep Space Nine'. It will be dark and badly received.

The only bitterness I had is: Where is the conversation on gender? That's been going on since there have been men and women, and still we're not hearing about what they're going through.

Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a... it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible. It should be, um, smelly.

People want the tragedy. They need things to go wrong, they need the tension. In my characters there’s a core of trust and love that I’m very committed to. These guys would die for each other, and it’s very beautiful. But at the same time, you can’t keep that safety. Things have to go wrong, bad things have to happen.

Buffy loves Angel. He loves her. And I love Ho Hos.

What I do like is hiking. And that's what filmmaking is. It's a hike. It's challenging and exhausting, and you don't know what the terrain is going to be or necessarily even which direction you're going in... but it sure is beautiful.

Identity is something that you are constantly earning.

This is a sad, sad reflection on our times, when people must feed off the carcasses of beloved stories from their youths – just because they can't think of an original idea of their own, like I did with my Avengers idea that I made up myself.

Directing is such alchemy, it's so easy to fail. And I've seen people who are great at their jobs because everybody has a go. Editors, DPs, actors, craft services guy, everybody wants to try it out but it is such a diffuse but necessary set of skills that you never know which one this person might lack.

If somebody comes up to me, it's because they're moved by something I'm moved by. I've never taken a job I didn't love... So when somebody's coming up to me, or they're writing, they're in the same space I am in.

That girl will rain destruction down on you and your ship. She is an albatross, Captain. Way I remember it, albatross was a ship's good luck, 'til some idiot killed it. [to Inara] Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.

I don't write just to be clever. But sometimes I do. And if you don't have an understanding of the language, then the way in which it's bent doesn't actually register. It's the old you-gotta-paint-like-them-before-you-can-paint-like-you thing.

I leave the world in terrible turmoil. I come back, same turmoil. Nothing at all different. Well, outfits are a little different.

Beautiful revelations of power are often written by the guy who got kicked around and didn’t have any power.

Lockheed! You found me! You are the best X-Dragon ever.

Don't just be yourself. Be all of your selves.

I'm pretty much good at heroic narratives and making people laugh.

I generally think that Hillary Clinton is a good egg and a good politician.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn.

I am the immaculate embodiment of worlds.

Two things that matter to me. Emotional resonance and rocket launchers.

I think everyone who makes movies should be forced to do television. Because you have to finish. You have to get it done, and there are a lot of decisions made just for the sake of making decisions. You do something because it's efficient and because it gets the story told and it connects to the audience.

This voting thing is actually beautiful. Not just necessary - it's a wonderful thing and it makes you powerful. And we've forgotten that in the most negative [president's] campaign in history.

The more power that we have, the less human we are.

What Sarah brings to the part is her intelligence, at the same time, she's got that hormonal, idiosyncratic goofiness that makes Buffy not just the Terminator.

When Roseanne read the first script of mine that got into her hands without being edited by someone else she said, 'How can you write a middle-aged woman this well?' I said, 'If you met my mom you wouldn't ask'.

If nothing we do matters... , then all that matters is what we do

I wanted to drag Shakespeare from obscurity. I've been a fan my whole life.

Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck.

Women all live a double standard, but this is actually sort of a beautifully grotesque parody of it. There's a weird kind of joy that I have in seeing [Hillary Clinton] trounce this essence of male bullshit.

What's plan b?' 'We all die now.' 'What's plan c?

The only way to real mature love is to get past the tropes of what we consider 'romance.'

I didn't know feminism was actually a thing until I left home and found out the country didn't run the way my mom's house did.

It's only recently women got to be action heroes on TV. Progress is slow, and often non-existent. There's plenty of cool comics with female characters... But all it takes is one Catwoman to set the cause back a decade.

It's not any huge secret that I'm an atheist.

When I created Buffy, I wanted to create a female icon, but I also wanted to be very careful to surround her with men that not only have no problem with the idea of a female leader, but were in fact engaged and even attracted to the idea.

It seemed to be a fundamental thing that women have something men don't, the obvious being an ability to bear children, and the resilience to hang in as parents. I don't understand why or how anyone ever pulled off the whole idea of "women are inferior".

Oddly enough, I never studied writing. I studied almost everything except writing.