Quotes from J. Michael Straczynski

A writer is without honor only in his or her own home, among his or her own family.

What am I supposed to do without you?" "Live. That's all. Just live." "I don't know if I know how." "You'll figure it out," I said, and curled up against him. There were two hours left before four o'clock. And in those two hours, we lived a lifetime.

Yeah, I was asleep, but it's okay. I was having my favorite dream. I have it all the time. I was dancing. I was beautiful. I was dancing.

1 Q: What do you get when you cross the Creative Artists Agency with a ham sandwich? A: A ham sandwich that never returns your freaking phone calls.

He showed me that words can do more than tell stories, they can heal, and as long as you live inside the dignity of what you write, no one can take that away that what matters most. Those who hate you can kill you, but they cannot destroy you or the ideals that matter to you. To be decent writer you had to give yourself over to the power of words and a love of storytelling. (203)

I was very clear that I wanted to keep 'Thor' out of the rest of the Marvel universe for no less than the first six issues. And the success of the book, I think, speaks well to that decision.

To me, science fiction is about the sense of mystery, the sense of awe. Not 'shock and awe', just 'awe.'

Understanding is a three-edged sword. Your side, my side, and the truth.

The American Way is an amalgam of our compassion, our strengths, our failings and our attempts to build a better world, a more perfect union.

We are in a tech-heavy society, plunging headlong into an unknown future. Science fiction is what allows you to stand back and analyze the impact of that and put it in context of how it affects people.

You should do what you enjoy doing, what brings you passion. As kids, we spontaneously sing and dance and tell stories, and along the way, someone comes and says, 'No. You shouldn't be doing that.' And we slowly begin to unlearn our passions. I think you have to hold on to those things.

As kids, we spontaneously sing and dance and tell stories, and along the way, someone comes and says, 'No. You shouldn't be doing that.' And we slowly begin to unlearn our passions. I think you have to hold on to those things.

I sometimes find reality far more fantastical and unlikely than what I could just make up.

Never follow somebody else's path; it doesn't work the same way twice for anyone... the path follows you and rolls up behind you as you walk, forcing the next person to find their own way.

There's a lot of comics writers out there whose work I appreciate and who are nice guys. I really want to work with guys I really respect and enjoy.

It's really important to me to keep growing as a writer, to look for new challenges and be harshly critical of my own work in order to learn and tell better stories.

Never follow somebody else's path; it doesn't work the same way twice for anyone.

The problem with writing a monthly book is that you're going through your work like a man running for a bus, red-faced and out of breath. There isn't time for reflection or critical self-examination.

On most TV shows, you work on a set and do some location.

Life isn't about the final moments, it's about the journey, it's about process. What makes 'Rocky' work as a movie is seeing him working his way up from the streets to the arena and the fight of his life. You could just show that fight, and it would be great, but seeing that journey illuminates that fight and adds profound meaning to it.

There are those who seem to feel they have no choice about being jerks in the present because they had a crappy childhood. Well, that's the definition of childhood; nobody gets out alive. You either get stronger from what you experience, or you turn it into a crutch, an excuse, a dodge.

Every time I got 'Amazing Spider-Man' or 'Fantastic Four' or another book firmly on the rails, we got pulled into some big event book or crossover and it cost momentum and messed badly with the pacing and structure of the book.

I don't need to write comics for a living. I have movies and TV for that. I write comics for one reason and one reason only: I love comics. I love the form, the structure, the storytelling process, I love everything about it.

Whenever you write for someone else, you're always aware - sometimes overtly, other times at an almost cellular, subliminal level - of the rules about what you can and can't do.