Top 94 Quotes & Sayings by Mark Millar

Wanted has gone into second, third and fourth printings of the individual issues and the north American printings of Wanted #1 are now close to 100,000.

At the moment, I have it planned as a six or seven year experiment, but the books will only ever appear in bursts like this every couple of years and only with the best quality artists.

The animated books pay the lowest rates at the Big Two and you can forget about royalties.

I think American audiences are quite interesting in that they can handle almost any amount of violence, but the moment the violence becomes sexual violence it immediately becomes an issue.

Being the first to do something like this also registers a lot of attention that the line might not have gotten if all four books had just appeared from one company.

I didn't want the headache of having a publisher reviewing everything I wrote in advance.

Marvel books also feed into the smaller publishers and the fact that this is happening in the same month we're launching Ultimate Fantastic Four is no coincidence.

I'd love to do something else for Avatar after this.

The books are all very, very different so the publishers really had to be different too.

Artists, no matter how good their intentions, are always slower than they think.

The trick was really finding the appropriate publisher for each of the projects I'd devised.

I spent as much time writing proposals in '98 and '99 as I did writing scripts.

However, if I can expand this to Top Cow or Avatar I'm helping the sales, however small, on my Marvel books because I'm almost certain to pick up some new readers.

Their argument, and I think it's a correct one, is that they'll make more money from the trades and the hardcovers if nobody messes with the creative team.

I'm honestly as happy writing Superman Adventures as I am writing Wanted.

I wanted to portray very, very dark subject matter and a deceptively complex story in the brightest colours and simplest lines possible to leave the readers reeling.

The breadth of the potential readership is also a factor.

It's been the most creatively liberating thing I've ever done and so I'm bringing some of that mad enthusiasm to Marvel for the next couple of years as they let me loose on some Marvel Universe titles you'll be hearing about soon.

We've had really good mainstream publicity for these books and both Wanted and Chosen were snapped up as movie deals before each series even ended so I'm honestly just pinching myself.

I didn't break into comics to write fairytales or crime comics.

I don't see one as bring better or more literate than the other and there's a real buzz to not only writing about a character I love like Superman, but also writing something that kids can enjoy.

Likewise, I see no shame in writing Captain America or Wolverine.

Jesus, man. Why do people want to be Paris Hilton and nobody wants to be Spider-Man?

Leaders don't ever "arrive." If we ever think we're done, we are done!

Organizations who win, think deeply, choose wisely, and act decisively.

Others control our opportunities, we control our readiness.

I am as resilient as the steel that was once made here, and I am a fighter, in every sense of the word. We all are.

Guess that's thirty-one pieces of silver you've got now, huh? Sleep well, Judas.

The success [of the X-Men], I think, is for two reasons. The first is that, creatively, the book was close to perfect ... but the other reason is that it was a book about being different in a culture where, for the first time in the West, being different wasn't just accepted, but was also fashionable. I don't think it's a coincidence that gay rights, black rights, the empowerment of women and political correctness all happened over those twenty years and a book about outsiders trying to be accepted was almost the poster-boy for this era in American culture.

In the U.S., Superman or Batman or something, the law-enforcement people, are the most famous comic characters. Americans have a respect, I think, for badges and a respect for uniforms. I think that's, in some ways, quite a nice thing, but it can be dangerous, too, because it can obviously be abused.

It didn't take a trauma to make you wear a mask. It didn't take your parents getting shot...or cosmic rays or a power ring...Just the perfect combination of loneliness and despair.

I'm just running through this list of potential nannies and wondered if we should go for a superhero this time. Do you think Wolverine would be interested? He seems to be on every other team right now.

All my kids love superheroes, but my middle daughter in particular is obsessed with Wonder Woman and Batgirl.

The glass is always completely full-half air and half liquid.

I'm very lucky that I have this other career that runs alongside my comic career, which is a film career, and I've been given this really lovely setup where they seem to make the movies very quickly as well.

First, believe in your ability to create the future. That's what leaders do-that is our job. Understand reality but never be imprisoned by it. Reality is a moment in time. The future has not yet been written-it is written by leaders.

If you feel the need to make everyone happy, you should be a wedding planner not a leader.

There probably aren't a lot of new superheroes around, so whenever one appears, it makes a bit of noise. Really, most of the people who are my friends write characters they loved as children. I get that, as well, because that's why I got into comics. But I'm also taking this massive liberation creatively, going off and doing new stuff. The first and foremost reason I do it is because I think they're fun, and I can do anything I want. I'm not constrained by continuity.

If you don't demonstrate leadership character, your skills and your results will be discounted, if not dismissed.

She was like John Rambo meets Polly Pocket; Dakota Fanning crossed with Death Wish 4.

Even when I was a little boy, when I was seven, I absolutely loved Wonder Woman, and I saw her as one of the superhero greats with Superman and Batman, and I think it's because she was her own thing. She always felt like the real deal the same way that Superman and Batman did. Whereas the She-Hulks and Spider-Women and all that kind of thing felt like a continuation of a concept.

I just think adding superheroes to something instantly makes it more interesting. I have a friend who says every movie should either be a Spider-Man movie, or at least have Spider-Man in it. I thought it was such a brilliant quote. It kind of is true, in a weird way.

The ultimate [act] that would be the taboo, to show how bad some villain is, was to have somebody being raped, you know? I don't really think it matters. It's the same as, like, a decapitation. It's just a horrible act to show that somebody's a bad guy.

The past is an anchor with suffering written on the rope. I don't live there now. I am cutting myself free.

I don't know, maybe it's just timely, or maybe it's the fact that I live in a house with four women, but I just find my thoughts kind of skewing that direction at the moment.

The highest form of leadership is one in which a leader raises up other leaders - not as an accident, but as a result of conscious effort.

I just love the fact that all my pals are basically looked after. You know, we have these amazing deals, these guys split 50 percent. We have ownership 50 percent, all the bonuses 50 percent, and everybody's going to be alright. So going forward into the future, every one of these Millarworld projects, as we call them, 50 percent partners on everything. So it's just a really happy environment to be working in.

Batman: a force of chaos in my world of perfect order. The dark side of the Soviet dream. Rumored to be a thousand murdered dissidents, they said he was a ghost. A walking dead man. A symbol of rebellion that would never fade as long as the system survived. Anarchy in black.

The heart is a muscle, and you strengthen muscles by using them. The more I lead with my heart, the stronger it gets.

Comic artists have always been part of my social circle. I just like hanging out with artists, and I always see them at conventions or a store signing or something. "Hey, we should do something together."

Decision-making is a skill. Wisdom is a leadership trait.

I'm so used to artists saying to me, "Listen, I'm going to have five pages done next week," and then three weeks later I'm phoning them, begging them for two pages. And Stuart [Immonen]is a guy who will promise you five pages and deliver six pages, and the six pages are even better than you could have ever imagined.

You can lead with or without a title. If you wait until you get a title, you may wait forever.

If I'm creating a new superhero, it shouldn't be any different from other superheroes in terms of the qualities. Obviously the personality can be different. I think traditionally in comics women have tended to be a girlfriend or the daughter of whoever, whether it's even Batgirl as Gordon's daughter, or whatever. There is that relation of the hero, you know, like Superman's cousin, Supergirl. And that's great. It's fantastic to have a link to these amazing characters, but I kind of like the idea of things being something in their own right, which is why I've always loved Wonder Woman.

Your capacity to grow determines your capacity to lead.

He [Stuart Immonen] and I have known each other over email for 18, 19 years or something, so to finally work with him is like kissing the girl that you always wanted to kiss.

I just noticed I've been writing lots of female-led things. Two of them haven't been announced yet, but the big Greg Capullo book I'm doing is a female-led story, and I'm doing another series with John Romita which is a female-led story as well.

We ordinary people might lack your great speed or your X-Ray vision, Superman, but never underestimate the power of the human mind. We carry the most dangerous weapon on Earth inside these thick skulls of ours.

Pretty much all comic-book people, like all Hollywood people, for the most part, are pretty liberal. I think especially UK writers. Alan Moore is probably the most radical guy you'll ever meet. I grew up loving those guys, so my heroes, as a kid, were radical cartoonists, essentially. I couldn't help but - I grew up in a left-wing household. But I do think it's fun, writing right-wing characters. I've found it interesting, just as a writer, to get inside their heads and make them likeable.

When you expect the best from people, you will often see more in them than they see in themselves.