I was in the beginning when [comic book superheroes] started, but not anymore. Now I expect it. I've gotten very used to it.

I don't think you ever outgrow your love for things that are bigger than life and more colorful than the average life. And somehow I feel that these comic book stories are like fairy tales for older people, because they have the same qualities.

I thought it would be great to do superheroes that have the same kind of life problems that any reader - that anybody could have.

If nobody is looking for a story, and I have no reason to write a story, I would really much rather to do anything else because it's no fun writing stories, particularly not for me. I just do it in order to sell them and make a couple of bucks.

I think it's just the challenge. It's not that all my life I've wanted to do characters [in Marvel] , because I never particularly thought about it, but the challenge of saying, "How could they be done differently that may be more absorbing or more effective?"

I wanted them to be diverse. The whole underlying principle of the X-Men was to try to be an anti-bigotry story to show there's good in every person.

No matter what you write, it's a matter of putting words in a certain order so that the reader will be interested in what you're writing.