110+ Grant Morrison Quotes On Writing, Society And Religion

Grant Morrison is a Scottish comic book writer, artist and playwright. He is known for his non-traditional and often surrealistic approach to comic book writing. He is best known for his work on titles such as Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, The Invisibles, New X-Men, All Star Superman, and Batman. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Grant Morrison on writing, life, society.

Top 10 Grant Morrison Quotes

1. I just wanted all the wars to be over so that we could spend the money on starships and Mars colonies.
2. A cannon fires only once but words detonate across centuries
3. Sometimes you wonder, in an interconnected universe, who's dreaming who?
4. Everyone does magic all the time in different ways. "Life" plus "significance" = magic.
5. Study yourself the way a hunter studied prey. Exploit your own weaknesses to create desired changes within yourself.
6. Laugh and the world laughs with you!
7. These characters were like twelve-bar blues or other chord progressions. Given the basic parameters of Batman, different creators could play very different music.
8. Then I reminded myself that all intelligent children suffer bad dreams.
9. Life doesn't have plots and subplots and denouements. It's just a big collection of loose ends and dangling threads that never get explained.
10. Reality and unreality have no clear distinction in our present circumstances.

Grant Morrison Short Quotes

• One must commit acts of the highest treason only when dressed in the most resplendent finery.
• I just do what I do because it feels right. Other people attach labels to that.
• I couldn't think of one clever way to stop this guy, so I just trusted to mindless violence.
• Only nothing is impossible.
• It's so horrible to realize you're just the same as everyone else, isn't it?
• Truth speaks best in the language of poetry and symbolism, I think.
• I was a clubber in the Nineties. I went dancing every week.
• I won't tell you again! Don't look back! In hell you never look back!
• The first light had cast the first shadow.
• Abandon the 'I', because it's a lie.

Grant Morrison Quotes About Writing

Burnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words. — Grant Morrison

I think the only way you can get something out is to invest some real emotion into it, which means you're already writing about what's going to happen to you, whether you know it or not. That's why I'm always surprised when people talk about writer's block. Because to me, it can't be stopped. — Grant Morrison

It surprises me constantly that my sometimes-unorthodox approach has such a large following, but I'm very grateful to my readers for allowing me to continue writing 10 or 12 hours a day. — Grant Morrison

I'm a fan myself, so I try to write the kind of comics I want to read. — Grant Morrison

It's always interesting to see what the real enthusiasts think, but they're rarely representative of the tastes of the wider audience, so I tend to write for myself, for an imagined smart 14-year-old, and for a couple of friends who are still big comics fans. — Grant Morrison

Your character that you create in your writing not only represents who you are, but also represents a number of people who you've met along the way. — Grant Morrison

Write comic books if you love comic books so much that you want to write them. Don't write them like movies. Comics can do a lot of things that movies can't do, and vice versa. — Grant Morrison

I write dozens and dozens of pages more than I need, and then edit them down to size. It's more like sculpture than construction. — Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison Quotes About Life

And that's why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death. — Grant Morrison

I’m a false icon! The media collaborate in promoting my superficial lifestyle as somehow more valid, more worthy of attention than your real lives! - Gideon Stargrave — Grant Morrison

I use everything. Turning life into stories is how I make sense of my experience. No matter how weird or disturbing or upsetting to me personally, it all finds its way in there. — Grant Morrison

I can always see ways to improve what I've done. At the same time, knowing it's all an ongoing life's work allows me to be less precious about blind alleys, failed experiments, and misfires. — Grant Morrison

I guess my inspiration is this - I like to pretend that every story that ever happened to 'Batman' was real and is part of this one guy's life. — Grant Morrison

The only thing that made me, or any of us, special was that no one in the whole of history would ever see the universe exactly the same way any other of us saw it. — Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison Quotes About Love

We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be. — Grant Morrison

I'm lucky to have a job doing something I really love to do, and I'm happy to accept the pressures of relentless deadlines or reader expectations as necessary evils. It's probably not as stressful as mining coal or leading men into battle. — Grant Morrison

Superman loves everyone. He's like Jesus except he punches people. — Grant Morrison

I love 'Batman.' I love the Adam West 'Batman.' I love the animated 'Batman.' The character of Batman can encompass any interpretation, which is what makes that character so brilliant and why it's survived so many different media. — Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison Quotes About Superman

The thing that's been exciting about 'Superman' is to see how the character has developed through generations. — Grant Morrison

Before it was a Bomb, the Bomb was an Idea. Superman, however, was a Faster, Stronger, Better Idea. — Grant Morrison

Actually, it's as if [Superman is] more real than we are. We writers come and go, generations of artists leave their interpretations, and yet something persists, something that is always Superman. — Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison Famous Quotes And Sayings

It's stupid, I know, but I care. All the things that meant so much when we were young. Under the blankets late at night, listening to long-distance radio. All those things lost now or broken. Can you remember? Can you remember that feeling? Perhaps I ought to go to a doctor. — Grant Morrison

We've always known we'd eventually be called upon to open our shirts and save the day, and the superhero was a crude, hopeful attempt to talk about how we all might feel on that day of great power, and great responsibility. — Grant Morrison

Sometimes I pretend not to look at my own characters, because that's like different people getting off with your girlfriend or something. — Grant Morrison

It's quite possible we may actually be looking at some kind of super-sanity here. A brilliant new modification of human perception, more suited to urban life at the end of the twentieth century...He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the lord of misrule and the world as a theatre of the absurd. — Grant Morrison

We're the new power, come to replace the old. Cameras in the head, children with microchips, spin doctors rewriting reality as it happens. — Grant Morrison

He read me extracts from a medical journal describing the progress of a staphylococcus aureus infection. And then he pleasured me with a potato. — Grant Morrison

I'm at a stage in my career where I don't expect or get too much editorial input into what I'm doing. I have a proven track record of success, so my editors are willing to cut me some slack even when a particular approach is not to their personal taste. — Grant Morrison

Seven actors have played Batman on the big screen, and if you can name all seven without reading any further, your youth has been wasted. — Grant Morrison

Performing magic has a lot to do with the arrangement of apparent coincidences and providing pathways along which desires can travel, or, to put it in more basic terms, there's little point in sigilizing for a lottery win if you don't also buy a lottery ticket. — Grant Morrison

Imagine the earth’s population of six billion people reduced to just one hundred representatives. Statistically, that makes 30 white, 70 non-white. It means 6 people own 59% of the wealth and they all live in North America. 80 are in substandard housing. One has an education. One owns a computer. Don’t blame me if it all sounds crazy. — Grant Morrison

Why am I in Hell? It hurts. It hurts all the time. Why am I in Hell? I just want to go home and lie on the bed the way I used to. Please take me home. — Grant Morrison

He felt the hot impact of bullets. He heard the sound of chopping meat. He thought 'is that me?' . . . and then he opened his eyes. — Grant Morrison

I write constantly, so it flows from one project to the next, and I would edit everything endlessly if I had the chance. I can always see ways to improve what I've done. At the same time, knowing it's all an ongoing life's work allows me to be less precious about blind alleys, failed experiments, and misfires. — Grant Morrison

It's hard for me to believe that a shy, bespectacled college graduate like Brad Meltzer who's a novelist and a father is a really setting out to be weirdly misogynistic. — Grant Morrison

The perfect fascist state needs to operate in conditions of perpetual warfare. Have you ever noticed how the world has been in constant crisis since World War II? — Grant Morrison

Consciousness, rather than being something that we have, is something we participate in. — Grant Morrison

Whatever you do, make sure you go right to the top, because you sure as hell can't piss upwards on people. — Grant Morrison

I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words. I use everything. Turning life into stories is how I make sense of my experience. — Grant Morrison

When was the last time you had a thought that wasn't put there by THEM? — Grant Morrison

Enough madness? Enough? And how do you measure madness? - The Joker — Grant Morrison

I think any writer coming on to Batman should at least attempt to do their own definitive version. What it means to them. Whatever they think that symbol or character can say. — Grant Morrison

I do like to keep abreast of what the hardcore vocal members of the comics-reading audience are talking about on Internet message boards, but there are so few of them, as a percentage of the buying audience, that I can't allow their opinions to dictate story direction. — Grant Morrison

Look at us! Are we not proof that there is no good, no evil, no truth, no reason? Are we not proof that the universe is a drooling idiot with no fashion sense - Mr Nobody on the fundamental philosophy of the Brotherhood of DADA — Grant Morrison

Einstein was wrong! I"M the speed of like CRACKING through shivery rainbows and GOD the sky whirls and withers like a melting RAINBOW! — Grant Morrison

Sometimes... sometimes I think the Asylum is a head. We're inside a huge head that dreams us all into being. Perhaps it's your head, Batman. Arkham is a looking glass... and we are you. — Grant Morrison

It’s mostly just you have to convince yourself that there’s nothing else in the room but John Lennon and suddenly things start John Lennon-ing! — Grant Morrison

If our shallow, self-critical culture sometimes seems to lack a sense of the numinous or spiritual it's only in the same way a fish lacks a sense of the ocean. — Grant Morrison

I don't ignore continuity, and try my best to stick as closely to the current status quo as possible, but it's not my primary concern when I start a story. — Grant Morrison

If this book has made any point clear, I hope it's that things don't have to be real to be true. Or vice versa. — Grant Morrison

We tell our children they're trapped like rats on a doomed, bankrupt, gangster-haunted planet with dwindling resources, with nothing to look forward to but rising sea levels and imminent mass extinctions, then raise a disapproving eyebrow when, in response, they dress in black, cut themselves with razors, starve themselves, gorge themselves, or kill one another. — Grant Morrison

Unlike novel characters, comic book characters last an eternity. When a character is changed beyond recognition, there's no longer the merchandising aspect. — Grant Morrison

Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases. — Grant Morrison

The big problem is time. I don't have enough of it to do all the things I think about doing. — Grant Morrison

Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world. — Grant Morrison

I should say I am far more cleverer than any of the people who put me here. As a matter of fact, I could leave any time I wanted. It's only a doll house after all. Anyway, I don't mind. I like dolls. Particularly the live ones. — Grant Morrison

I tend to only read comics written by friends or people I've known. And I'm not a great comic reader. — Grant Morrison

I prefer working out of strict continuity, because no normal human being can have a firm grip on the constantly shifting bardo-like territory of a comics universe, where entire histories can be erased by a strong enough super-sneeze. — Grant Morrison

I was always interested in myths growing up. So, first I got into some Roman myths, then I was interested in Norse, then Celtic, then I started spreading to all the other mythologies. — Grant Morrison

And when it's all done, when there's no one left you'll come back for me. And tell me who I am and why I have to do what I do. And explain 'Eternity.' You'll come back — Grant Morrison

I plan years in advance, but I like to leave enough space in the narrative scheme to change things, because I always get my best ideas the closer I come to the end of a project, after I've lived with it for a while. — Grant Morrison

Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real. — Grant Morrison

I have to confess I'm not a huge comics fan in the wider sense of comics as an art form. — Grant Morrison

Remember it's all just a mirror we made to see ourselves in. — Grant Morrison

Oh, yes! Fill the churches with dirty thoughts! Introduce honesty to the White House! Write letters in dead languages to people you've never met! Paint filthy words on the foreheads of children! Burn your credit cards and wear high heels! Asylum doors stand open! Fill the suburbs with murder and rape! Divine madness! Let there be ecstasy, ecstasy in the streets! Laugh and the world laughs with you! — Grant Morrison

Why did you make it so hard for me? I'd rather empty the ocean with a sieve. I do it for you. Or count the grains of sand on every beach. All for you. There are so many people, so many countries. But I have time. All the time in the world. Eternity. — Grant Morrison

Sometimes it’s only madness that makes us what we are. — Grant Morrison

I AM happy”. They understood what we english people have long forgot. We're not our sadness. We're not our happiness or our pain but our language hypnotizes us and traps us in little labelled boxes () — Grant Morrison

The moon is so beautiful. It's a big silver dollar, flipped by God. And it landed scarred side up, see? So He made the world. — Grant Morrison

The only time I ever met a character that I wrote was when I met Ian McKellan, when he was playing Magneto in the 'X-Men' movies. — Grant Morrison

Talking to oneself, I have often thought, is the best way to be sure of intelligent and witty conversation. — Grant Morrison

The more I think about it, the more I realize that schools are just factories for turning out robots, that's all. They get you when your small and vulnerable and they take all the human parts away, bit by bit, until you're just a wind-up toy. Turn the key and set it running. And the toy goes to university, gets a job, settles down with someone nice. — Grant Morrison

Who needs girls when you've got comics? — Grant Morrison

I run blindly through the madhouse ... And I cannot even pray ... For I have no God. — Grant Morrison

Afraid? Batman's not afraid of anything. It's me. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that The Joker may be right about me. Sometimes…I question the rationality of my actions. And I’m afraid that when I walk through those asylum gates... when I walk into Arkham and the doors close behind me... it’ll be just like coming home. — Grant Morrison

With Marvel and DC, you're working with their pre-established fictional universes and characters. At those places, you're working with characters who will outlive you and maybe your children and your childern's children. Batman will outlive me, Spider-Man will outlive me, the Avengers will outlive me, and so it goes. — Grant Morrison

From now on, I'm opting for ontological terrorism. — Grant Morrison

The world gets more like Disneyland every day, and it's the same the other way round. I can't explain what I know. Try explaining RED to a DOG and see how fast he gets bored. — Grant Morrison

My art school rejection letter arrived as a cold manila fist that closed around my fragile hopes ... The fear was practically edible. Nothing would happen unless I get out and make it happen. Then, as if handling me the keys to the jet pack, my dad bought me a typewriter and a taped message to the inside of its case: "Son - the world is waiting to hear from you". — Grant Morrison

The interior of our skulls contains a portal to infinity. — Grant Morrison

This is the end of our sentence — Grant Morrison

A bullet in the right place can change the world. — Grant Morrison

Kipling: Where's your sense of humor? Rebis: We're working on reconstructing it. — Grant Morrison

And I ask him why he cuts his arms with a razor. "Just fo feel. Just to feel something. — Grant Morrison

I don't like to think of my readership as "fans," a word which has always suggested a kind of power relationship I'm uncomfortable with. — Grant Morrison

All I know is that you won't come back until they're all dead. 'Eternity.' Every last one of them. Every man. Every woman. Every child. Global massacre. I dream about that day. A planet of corpses — Grant Morrison

There are dozens of unfinished or aborted projects in my files, but I can only assume they don't get done because they're not robust enough to struggle through the birth process. — Grant Morrison

Your head's like mine, like all our heads; big enough to contain every god and devil there ever was. Big enough to hold the weight of oceans and the turning stars. Whole universes fit in there! But what do we choose to keep in this miraculous cabinet? Little broken things, sad trinkets that we play with over and over. The world turns our key and we play the same little tune again and again and we think that tune's all we are. — Grant Morrison

Stop being frightened. You only see a monster because they want you to see monsters everywhere. They've conditioned you to look for monsters in every shadow, every coat hung on every door. As long as we keep seeing monsters, we'll continue to need protection and that's how other people get to control our lives. — Grant Morrison

I loved IRON MAN: Robert Downey Jr. has been and probably will be my favourite actor for a long time…but IRON MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, SUPERMAN RETURNS and all the others feel a little like Saturday morning cartoons next to the carbon black glory that is 'The Dark Knight.' Trust me, *this* is the future of this sort of thing. — Grant Morrison

I think that superhero comics in particular are really useful for talking about big emotions and feelings, and personifying and concretizing symbols. — Grant Morrison

Life Lessons by Grant Morrison

1. Grant Morrison emphasizes the importance of following your own creative vision and not being afraid to take risks. He also encourages readers to think outside the box and consider the potential of different perspectives. Lastly, he demonstrates the power of storytelling to explore complex themes and ideas.