I wanted to give readers the feeling of knowing the characters, a mental image.

There was a sort of irony in the fact that these [superhero] characters - many of whom in that period, the Golden Age, had been evolved to fight the Nazis - were themselves very much in the Nazi ideal. The idea that you can solve problems through physical strength, by being stronger and more dominant and more powerful - that is fascism. I mean, that's it, that's the essence of fascism. I don't think the creators of the superheroes or the kids who were reading them at the time were the slightest bit aware of it.

The world like our heads was meant to be escaped from, they are prisons world and head alike.

. . .I really ought to have recognized it for what it was and, perhaps, to have stopped right there - for it was nostalgia, and what inspires nostalgia has been dead a long time

I have a good memory for words, and when I come upon a word I don't know, I remember it, or try to - it's almost like a tic.

Every golden age is as much a matter of disregard as of felicity.

... and because it was a drunken perception, it was perfect, entire, and lasted about half a second.