Stan Lee Quotes

I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him.

I don't expect every movie to be done exactly the way I would have done it.

That's what everybody tells me. "I would've had a great comic-book collection, but my mother made me throw them away." But when I was growing up, my mother didn't care. As long as I was reading, she didn't care if my room was filled with comics. I could have saved everything. I was just too stupid to do it.

My problem is I don't see and hear that well, so when I go to the movies, I can make out what's going on, but I can't hear what they're saying. And after the movie, I have to ask whoever I'm with "now, what was that all about?"

Once you get the script, you then hope you can get the director that you want. Then you hope he can get the cast he wants. Again, you can go quickly or there can be a million stumbling blocks. There's just no way to know.

It's amazing what these superhero movies have become.

Technology isn't a villain. Technology should help, but if you just use the technology for the sake of technology, then you're cheating your audience. You're not giving them the best story and the best direction and so forth.

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.

There's never a time when I'm not working. I don't take vacations.

Achilles, without his heel, you wouldn't even know his name today.

So I'm happiest when I'm working with artists and writers, and involved in stories, whether we're talking about animation or movies or comics or television.

Some people will say, "Why read a comic book? It stifles the imagination. If you read a novel you imagine what people are like. If you read a comic, it's showing you." The only answer I can give is, "You can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn't want to see it on the stage?

I'm no prophet, but I'm guessing that comic books will always be strong. I don't think anything can really beat the pure fun and pleasure of holding a magazine in your hand, reading the story on paper, being able to roll it up and put it in your pocket, reread again later, show it to a friend, carry it with you, toss it on a shelf, collect them, have a lot of magazines lined up and read them again as a series. I think young people have always loved that. I think they always will.

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

The comic book industry has turned into the wellspring for all of these movies that are all based on the comic books.

If you have a character that seems to be all perfect, it's hard to relate to him because when you read a story you really want to empathize with the character that you are reading about. And it's hard to empathize with someone who is flawless and who has no problems.

You can't kill a good comic book series.

I know the world expects me to have superpowers, and it'll be quite a disappointment. But I just play myself.

To be honest, when I was writing these stories a million years ago, I never thought about movies at all one way or another. It would have seemed almost miraculous for these things to be movies someday. To me, they were just comic books that I hoped would sell so I could keep my job.

To my way of thinking, whether it's a superhero movie or a romance or a comedy or whatever, the most important thing is you've got to care about the characters. You've got to understand the characters and you've got to be interested. If the characters are interesting, you're half-way home.

The movies have made the comic books much more valuable and more respected.

Usually, the biggest hang-up is the script. You could have a script done in six months that you love, or it could be like The Fantastic Four it's been almost 10 years.

Your humans slaughter each other because of the color of your skin, or your faith or your plitics -- or for no reason at all -- too many of you hate as easily as you draw breath. - Magneto

The purpose of this is not show that I can do it better, because I think Superman is perfect. The original creation of Superman nobody could have done that better and I think Batman is pretty much a perfect character... The same with all of them. I'm just going to try to find a way to say, "If that wasn't the original idea, what would be another way to do it that would be more in my style?".

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.

I'm used to doing comic books, where every month there's a new comic book! I find that the movie business is not quite the same. It doesn't move quite as fast.

I've written so many things over the years that I don't want to go back to being just a scriptwriter. I'm in what I consider to be the enviable position of all I have to do is come up with the idea and write an outline that makes it seem like it's a viable idea that will interest people, and then other people write the scripts -- and I become the executive producer or the producer, depending on how much involvement I have, and I get a creative credit and then move on to the next project.

I have always tried to have a message, not to be a preacher, but a message that shows it's better to be a good guy than a bad guy, and I try to make it clear that doing the right thing is more attractive than not.

I always sympathized with the people who did work for hire; I was one of them.

From 1940 to about 1960, I had been writing just regular comics, the way my publishers wanted me too. He didn't want me to use words of more than two syllables if I could help it. He didn't want me to waste time on worrying about good dialogue or characterization. Just give me a lot of action, lot of fight scenes.

If I got a superpower I wouldn't say, oh, I got to get a costume and put on a mask. I would say hey, I can do something better than other people. How can I turn it into a buck?

Maybe there will always be a market for the regular comic books because you can read [them] at your own pace. You can save them, collect them, [then] go back and read them again.

No matter how good a story is, if you're at a newsstand and you see a lot of comic books, you don't know how good the story is unless you read it. But you can spot the artwork instantly, and you know whether you like the artwork, whether it grabs you or not.

I like Silver Surfer because he's the most philosophical, always philosophizing about the human race and the human condition and why people are the way they are, why they don't appreciate this wonderful planet they live on... he has a nice moral tone.

Some people are able to not only entertain the public in any way that they can but also in some way to throw in some sort of inspirational message with the entertainment. I have always tried to do that with whatever I wrote. And I'm sure that a lot of other writers do, too.

I remember when I was a kid, I loved Sherlock Holmes. I thought Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the greatest writers, because I felt I knew Sherlock Holmes. He existed to me. When I went to England the first thing I did was go to Baker Street to look for his house. I think you've got to try to make all of your characters as empathetic and realistic as possible.

We're living in a world where everything moves very quickly. We've become a very visual society, so I think it's a very natural thing that people are captivated with the illustrations in a story.

Of what import are brief, nameless lives . . . to Galactus?

You can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn't want to see it on the stage?

Movies help the sales of the comics.

I used to be embarrassed because I was just a comic-book writer while other people were building bridges or going on to medical careers. And then I began to realize: entertainment is one of the most important things in people's lives. Without it they might go off the deep end. I feel that if you're able to entertain people, you're doing a good thing.

Just because you have superpowers, that doesn't mean your love life would be perfect. I don't think superpowers automatically means there won't be any personality problems, family problems or even money problems. I just tried to write characters who are human beings who also have superpowers.

What did Doctor Doom really want? He wanted to rule the world. Now, think about this. You could walk across the street against a traffic light and get a summons for jaywalking, but you could walk up to a police officer and say "I want to rule the world," and there's nothing he can do about it, that is not a crime. Anybody can want to rule the world. So, even though he was the Fantastic Four's greatest menace, in my mind, he was never a criminal!

I've been very lucky. All I wanted was to pay the rent. Then these characters took off and suddenly there were Hulk coffee mugs and Iron Man lunchboxes and The Avengers sweatshirts everywhere. Money's okay, but what I really like is working.

I had a publisher who felt comics were just for little kiddies, so he never wanted me to use words of more than two syllables.

I don't know where the hell I'll be in 5 years. Maybe I'll be producing movies maybe I'll be on a corner selling apples. I don't know, but I'm having a hell of a lot of fun.

The only time I go on the set is when I have a cameo to do in the picture. I go to the set and I do my little cameo and I meet all the people. It's a great way to spend the day. And then I go back to my own world.

All I thought about when I wrote my stories was, "I hope that these comic books would sell so I can keep my job and continue to pay the rent." Never in a million years could I have imagined that it would turn into what it has evolved into nowadays. Never.