Top 475 Quotes & Sayings by Joss Whedon - Page 3

I always was an early-morning or late-night writer. Early morning was my favorite; late night was because you had a deadline. And at four in the morning, you make up some of your most absurd jokes.

I have a pathological fear of confrontation. I'm working on that.

You don't buy a Picasso because you love the frame.

I like horror; I like comedy; I like drama; I like action; I like female heroes.

I didn't study writing. I didn't write anything substantial until I got to California.

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.

Personally, the NSA collecting data on me freaks me out. It totally freaks me out. And yet I'm from the generation that wants to put a GPS in their kids so I always know where they are.

The way a musical can make us feel is unlike anything else, in song and particularly in dance. I think people fly through plate-glass windows when they get shot because movies don't have dance scenes any more. This is what we do instead.

Wonder Woman isn't Spider-man or Batman. She doesn't have a town, she has a world. That was more interesting to me than a kind of contained, rote superhero franchise.

I was very proud of my father, and I admired him, but I always thought he was more interesting than the shows he was working on.

I like Victorian children's novels extremely a lot. If I would say I collect anything, that's what I'll hunt for now and again at old book stores.

Twelve-year-old me wanted to do everything: act and sing and paint and dance.

My dad would go to work every day and write in a room full of funny people. He enjoyed it. I know great writers who find the process agonising but to me, writing has always been sheer joy.

I've been doing Shakespeare readings with my friends for years.

Especially, I think, living in any fantasy or science fiction world means really understanding what you're seeing and reading really densely on a level that a lot of people don't bother to read.

I've had so much success. I had something to say, I got to say it, people heard it, and they agreed. That's every artist's dream. That's the brass ring.

I don't like uncertainty. I don't play poker. I don't like bluffing.

I loved working with 'The Avengers' cast and we had a great time, but it was a job, and they had other commitments during that job, so they would go off and do other things.

I love TV in a way that I don't love any other medium.

I never write anything without humor, just because I like humor, but at the same time, it is a way for anything fantastical to become relatable.

I've often said there's no such thing as a track record in TV. I seen people who created things much more successful than mine treated like dirt.

Soon, I will be 'King of all Hollywoodland.'

Every kid who hated grownups becomes a grownup. Well, except the ones who died.

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

Casting is storytelling.

I love all genres. The only thing I get stymied by is the Family Drama. I don't necessarily know how to approach that.

The master plan does not have a master plan. Television ultimately finds itself, and after it finds itself, it finds itself changing.

I don't tend to write straight dramas where real life just impinges. But because I don't, when I do, it is very interesting to slap people in the face with just an absolute of life.

Writers are completely out of touch with reality. Writers are a crazy person. We create conflict - for a living. We do this all the time, sometimes on a weekly basis; we create horrible, incredible circumstances and then figure a way out of them. That's what we do.

I like to think that I'm a populist entertainer, but I'm a little bit idiosyncratic, and sometimes the networks wouldn't really roll with that.

I spent a ton of time alone. I was raised by a feminist; I had a terrifying father and oppressively scary and mean brothers. We had a farm. The rule was between breakfast and lunch you weren't allowed to make a sound.

I always believe in just have as much fun as you can so that when you're in the part that you hate, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, that you're close to finished.

I always want to make sure I'm telling a story about people that I care about.

Most of the dialogue in 'Speed' is mine, and a bunch of the characters. That was actually pretty much a good experience. I have quibbles. I also have the only poster left with my name still on it. Getting arbitrated off the credits was un-fun.

I have abused language. I love it, and I abuse it... 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.

I'm very much more interested in the created family than I am in actual families.

My absolute favorite part of Comic-Con is seeing, like, a 'Mass Effect' guy hanging out with a 'Sailor Moon,' and they're just having a great time.

The problem for me is that 'Watchmen,' one of the great comics of all time, is a look at superheroes that has gone beyond the concept of or necessity for superheroes.

I never tire of the heroes that I knew growing up. The fun is not that much different from doing a television show: You're stuck with a certain set of rules, and then, rather than trying to break them, it's just trying to peel away and see what's underneath them. That to me is really fun.

The fact is some people really love my work, some people not so much, but at the end of the day, I don't want anybody coming out of the movie thinking about me.

I love a good romantic comedy.

I usually write things in my head before I ever write them down. When I write it out, usually I've already figured out what it is I'm trying to do.

I've been in this business for a long while, but it's not like I've been waiting tables. Since I started writing, I've only worked on things that I love. I've had a lot of heartbreak, but you don't become an artist and not expect that.

I didn't watch a lot of American television growing up. I just liked to read a lot and watch movies - movies, movies, and more movies. My family used to make fun of me because I'd like every movie I saw.

I was raised by a hardcore feminist.

I never wanted to take a job because I needed money, and I never have.

The people who feel the most strongly about something will turn on you the most vociferously if they feel you've let them down.

My mom and dad were divorced, and although they got along very well, my mom thought American television was reprehensible, so I was raised on the BBC. I kind of agreed with her. We watched American news, though.

I never give up on anything, because you come back around, and suddenly the thing you thought you'd never do is relevant.

I still believe that even though 'The Empire Strikes Back' is better in innumerable ways than 'Star Wars,' 'Star Wars' wins.

I'll always protect what I'm working on. Which is why more and more of it is stuff only I can ruin.

I go to movies expecting to have a whole experience. If I want a movie that doesn't end, I'll go to a French movie. That's a betrayal of trust to me. A movie has to be complete within itself; it can't just build off the first one or play variations.

Running a TV show is always running a TV show; it's never not running a TV show.

I just love language. I mean, I love it. I love stage directions. Any opportunity to write. I hadn't written in so long, I get very crazy and miserable. I - it's like not seeing my kids: I can't do it for very long.

I respect television in a way that some people who came out of film might not.

I tend to tell stories that have a lot of momentum; it's not like 'and then months later...' I like things where the momentum of one action rolls into the next one so everything is the sum of that.

If somebody is in a story, they need to be there for a reason, and not just to set up somebody else's story.

Shakespeare's language does not require a British accent. It requires a facility with language, and that's all.

I don't have a ton of enemies. I get along with people pretty well when I'm not annoying them to death.

I always tend to think just left of center, to remove myself from the world by one step. It is very freeing, and it's a particular way of coming at stories and looking at them that I find the most beautiful stuff that I know comes from, ultimately.