Quotes from Marjorie Liu

I love writing romance, along with science fiction and fantasy - and my books usually meld all three to some degree.

I'd like to go back in time and haunt Robert Louis Stevenson during his years in the South Pacific.

Individual writers can certainly make a difference, but they are working within a system, an institution, that still holds tremendous power over whose voices are heard and whose voices are rewarded.

I'm really bothered by questions of humanity, questions of war, questions of slavery.

Every single girl, whether we want to recognize it or not, is a warrior.

I was always into fantasy characters, stories of magic, but after Red Sonja, I became obsessed with the persona, the image, of the warrior woman - the sword-wielding, defiant, fearless woman.

Sana Takeda is a genius. It's really that simple. Her vision and sense of story and beauty is beyond compare. I loved working with her on 'X-23.' I knew, though, that she could do much more beyond the constraints of a traditional superhero story.

Superheroes are the best of us. Never mind all those powers or the crazy costumes. The heart of a superhero is meant to inspire.

A dark, fantastic adventure set in an alternate 1900s Asia, 'Monstress' is buried deep in the supernatural. It's a story I've wanted to tell for a long time - it just took me awhile to put all the pieces together.

I don't write fight scenes in comics all that well. I think they're a waste of space unless they can move a story forward in some compelling fashion. You've only got twenty-two pages to work with. Why throw that away on a set of meaningless punches?

I had never been a comic book person before, really, because I had no access to them. Once I had access, I thought that these are just another avenue for telling stories and delving into the imagination.

I think that comic books have appealed to female readers for years.

I love writing comics too much.

I didn't know how to write comics. I had to teach myself.

Comics writing is for your artist. It's not for the general reader; it's for the artist. So I love writing scripts for artists.

I could be shooting myself in the foot, but in some ways, I feel I've said all I've needed to say when to comes to, say, the 'X-Men.' I think I've hit the bright points, I think I've hit what I wanted to hit, and I can be happy moving on doing other things.

I had my dreams, and even though everyone told me that they weren't practical, I knew in my heart that this is what I had to do. Even if it ended up being a failure, I had to make the attempt.

When I first came to comics, it was, like, dudes. The feeling, the air, the presence is overwhelmingly male.

We're not accustomed to giving women the space to express the full range of emotions and flaws that men are permitted. Anger and aggressiveness aren't part of the scale of what is acceptable behavior in women, whereas men - in reality and in fiction - are allowed a much fuller range of emotion.

A novel is 400 pages; it's an endurance race. There's no artist, so I have to describe everything. It's all prose. Whereas with comics, I can rely on the artist. It's really wonderful to have that collaboration and to not always feel the burden of describing everything myself and also just to have someone who can paint the world.

I think we worry way too much about where books should fit inside genres. In a romance, the hero and heroine are on a journey together, and no matter how awful it gets, by the end of the book they'll be in love, with the probability of a happy ending.

If men disappeared tomorrow, we'd still be having the abortion debate. If men disappeared tomorrow, there would still be racism and conflicts over religion.

The greatest enemy one ever faces is one's own self.

I love writing prose. I really love writing prose. It's very pleasurable for me.