Top 222 Quotes & Sayings by Stan Lee

I've been the luckiest man in the world because I've had friends, and to have the right friends is everything: people you can depend on, people who tell you the truth if you ask something.

Marvel Studios has depicted the Marvel superheroes so beautifully that the whole world loves them.

I don't sound disloyal, but I've never had a pair of Marvel pyjamas or underwear. I do have a lot of Marvel figurines at home in a cabinet. Every time they make a new Marvel figure I put it in my cabinet.

If I'm half as good as everybody said I am, I'm far too good to be wasting time with ordinary people. But I seem to be spending my life with ordinary people, who are the best people in the world.

I like being with people. I like talking to them. I like everything about my life, so it's fun.

My mother was the greatest mother in the world. She thought I was the greatest thing on two feet. I'd come home with a little composition I had written at school, and she'd look at it and say, 'It's wonderful! You're another Shakespeare!' I always assumed I could do anything. It really is amazing how much that has to do with your attitude.

It's totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race - to despise an entire nation - to vilify an entire religion.

The experience of reading a printed comic book will never change, but now, thanks to the digital age, there are many different ways to enjoy the same story. Digital comic books, of course, can be interactive in many different ways, allowing the reader to feel like a participant in the story.

Because I've spent most of my life with such a beautiful, talented, challenging female, I feel I've gained - and am still gaining - a great deal of knowledge about the feminine mystique and about personal relationships - knowledge which is so important to a writer.

I have always included minority characters in my stories, often as heroes.

The pleasure of reading a story and wondering what will come next for the hero is a pleasure that has lasted for centuries and, I think, will always be with us.

I wouldn't mind, if Peter Parker had originally been black, a Latino, an Indian, or anything else, that he stay that way. But we originally made him white. I don't see any reason to change that.

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

For years, kids have been asking me what's the greatest superpower. I always say luck. If you're lucky, everything works. I've been lucky.

I think I've never stopped feeling like a kid.

I have never had a lap dance in Tampa or any other part of Florida. If I ever did have a lap dance, I don't think I would be discussing television ideas with the girl that was giving it to me.

I think the world has a place for gay superheroes, certainly.

All of the characters at Marvel were my ideas, but the ideas meant nothing unless I had somebody who could illustrate it.

I was stupid in a business way. I should have been greedier.

When I was a kid, my favorite superhero was Robin Hood.

I love Marvel and the people there. I'm glad I'm still part of it.

I always felt the 'X-Men,' in a subtle way, often touched upon the subject of racism and inequality, and I believe that subject has come up in other titles, too. But we would never pound hard on the subject, which must be handled with care and intelligence.

I always wrote for myself. I figured I'm not that different from other people. If there's a story I like a lot, there's got to be others with similar tastes.

We live in a diverse society - in fact, a diverse world - and we must learn to live in peace and with respect for each other.

Every kid wants to be an actor. When I was a kid, I thought, 'Oh, it'd be great to be like Errol Flynn. I want to be an actor.'

Sooner or later, if man is ever to be worthy of his destiny, we must fill our hearts with tolerance.

America is made of different races and different religions, but we're all co-travelers on the spaceship Earth and must respect and help each other along the way.

When I was a kid, Disney was one of my gods. I just loved movies like 'Snow White' and 'Pinocchio.'

I grew up in New York City during the Depression. My earliest recollections were of my parents talking about what they would do if they didn't have the rent money. Luckily, we were never evicted. But my father was unemployed most of the time.

If you enjoy what you do, if you are interested in what you do, I really think that's the best situation.

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 see myself in everything I write. All the good guys are me.

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.

We all wish we had super powers. We all wish we could do more than we can do.

Reading is very good. And you can quote me!

If you are interested in what you do, that keeps you going!

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'm happiest when I'm working. If I'm not working, I feel like I'm wasting my time.

Comics are stories; they're like novels or anything else. So the first thing you have to do is become a good storyteller.

I'm just somebody who tries to write things that entertain people. And if I can do it in a way that makes them prefer to emulate the good guy than the bad guy, I'm happy.

When you work with people whom you like and you admire because they're so good at what they do, it doesn't feel like work. It's like you're playing.

I guess one person can make a difference.

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

Life is never completely without its challenges.

I think people have always loved things that are bigger than life, things that are imaginative.

MARVEL IS A CORNUCOPIA OF FANTASY, A WILD IDEA , A SWASHBUCKLING ATTITUDE , AN ESCAPE FROM THE HUMDRUM AND PROSAIC. IT'S A SERENDIPITOUS FEAST FOR THE MIND, THE EYE , AND THE IMAGINATION, A LITERATE CELEBRATION OF UNBRIDLED CREATIVITY, COUPLED WITH A TOUCH OF REBELLION AND AN INSOLENT DESIRE TO SPIT IN THE EYE OF THE DRAGON.

The only advice anybody can give is, if you wanna be a writer, keep writing. And read all you can, read everything.

If you wanna be an artist carry sketch pad with you, and sketch everything you see. Get so you can draw anything and it looks like what it's supposed to be. It's a lot of work, but if you really have it in you, it's not like work. It becomes fun.

I think any comic book - or really, any book that you can read - in a sense is an educational tool in that it helps literacy. The more you read, the better you get at it. It almost doesn't matter what you read, the important thing is for young people to become readers.

I'm a frustrated actor. My ... goal is to beat Alfred Hitchcock in the number of cameos. I'm going to try to break his record.

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.

With great power comes great responsibilty.

No one has a perfect life. Everybody has something that he wishes was not the way it is.

When writing, I model all the heroes after myself. Of course, it's hard to make them quite as wonderful as I am, but I come as close as I can.

Every day, there's a new development. ... There's no limit to the things that are happening.

One of the keys is, and it may sound funny, talking about characters with super powers, but one of the keys is to make your characters as realistic and believable as possible. Even if they have super powers, you say to yourself, "Well, if somebody had a super power like this, what would his life be like? Wouldn't he still maybe have to go to the dentist or wouldn't he have to worry about making a living? What about his love life?" You've got to make characters that your reader can believe exists or might exist.

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.

Everybody learns differently and everybody gets to a certain point from a different direction.

Comic books to me are fairy tales for grown-ups.

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.