Quotes from J. Michael Straczynski

When you're writing a story in bits and pieces, month in and month out, there really isn't time or space for reflection, no room to learn what those scripts had to teach you.

The whole point of having great characters is the opportunity to explore them more deeply with time, re-interpreting them for each new age.

I want to have time. When you're doing a monthly book, you're like a man racing after a bus. You're breathless and red-faced. I want to build in quality control.

When writers don't know what to do with a character, they build up the supporting cast and universe to kind of hide that fact. After a while, you can no longer see the character for the underbrush. When that happens, you need to bring out the weed-whacker to clear some of that away so you can focus on the main character.

I think that we are already making steps toward mapping out the brain so we can identify the chemical patterns that create and store memory.

Faith and reason are the shoes on your feet. You can travel further with both than you can with just one.

When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree by the river of truth, and tell the whole world - No, you move.

The more important the emotion is, the fewer words required to express it: Will you go out with me? I think I like you. I care for you. I love you. Marry me. Goodbye.

Stage-persona notwithstanding, I'm extremely shy and quiet. Almost painfully shy. People misinterpret that as being above it all or not interested.

On the Internet, inside information is currency, and there will always be counterfeiters among us.

To have someone like Clint Eastwood come along and shoot your first draft as written is just any screenwriter's dream. And Clint is very straightforward. If it's good enough to get his attention, it's good enough to produce.

Writers write for one reason: to create an emotion in the reader, to reach across and make them feel something. You want a reaction. Yeah, it's nicer when the reaction is to throw flowers than it is to throw brickbats, but you have to accept both equally.

Understanding is a three edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.

I like writing. It's partly control freak, and partly I really like what I do for a living. I have the luckiest job in the world. I can get up every day and do what I love for a living.

I wake up every morning knowing how ridiculously lucky I am to be able to do what I love for a living, and that sense of wonder never, ever wears off.

I've worked on high visibility shows that weren't always the best, and low visibility shows that I love but that didn't have the PR behind them.

Follow your passion. The rest will attend to itself. If I can do it, anybody can do it. It's possible. And it's your turn. So go for it. It's never too late to become what you always wanted to be in the first place.

Again, one of the problems I have with television, as I mentioned before, is it's trivial in many ways, and I think that a lot of folks out there are looking for new metaphors and new ways of thinking about things.

I am a huge zombie fan. I have probably seen the George Romero movies 100 times each, without exaggeration.

I've changed my mind. I've decided that at the end I want to be cremated and my ashes scattered over someone I don't like.

My philosophy: find what it is you want to say, walk in the room, say it, and get the hell out.

There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.

It was the dawn of the third age of mankind.

If a person with a bullet in Dallas can change the world, imagine a person with an idea could do.