Top 100 Joss Whedon Quotes
#1. I'm never interested in movies where you don't care about the people you're watching, and that's my biggest quibble about horror, that kids have gotten stupider and stupider.
Joss Whedon
#2. I can do web, comic books, macrame, art.
Joss Whedon
#3. Recognizing power in another does not diminish your own.
Joss Whedon
#4. Why do you write strong female characters?
Because you're still asking me that question.
Joss Whedon
#5. I hate it when people talk about Buffy as being campy ... I hate camp, I don't enjoy dumb TV. I believe Aaron Spelling has single-handedly lowered SAT scores.
Joss Whedon
#6. Are you all right?"
"Oh my god! I phased!"
"Are you all right?"
"Are you?"
"It was strange."
"I can't believe I phased just then! That's never ... it was totally your fault."
"I like to think so, yes."
"Tee hee.
Joss Whedon
#7. To forgive is an act of compassion ... It's not done because people deserve it. It's done because they need it.
Joss Whedon
#8. Who is to say who is the villain and who is the hero? Probably the dictionary.
Joss Whedon
#9. You get hurt, hurt 'em back. You get killed, walk it off.
Joss Whedon
#10. In production, in the first couple of weeks of production, that it was more like making an internet musical.
Joss Whedon
#11. Everything is a drug. Family, art, causes, new shoes ... We're all just tweaking our chem to avoid the void.
Joss Whedon
#12. There's no fuzzy middle ground. You either believe that women are people or you don't. It's that simple.
Joss Whedon
#13. I was never a games night guy, but at some point, social interaction starts to freak me out. So when there's a point, it's easier for me to see the people I love and hang out and try to have fun.
Joss Whedon
#14. Buffy loves Angel. He loves her. And I love Ho Hos.
Joss Whedon
#16. If I kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed.
Joss Whedon
#18. I'm a science fiction geek from birth - that's just who I am.
Joss Whedon
#19. I leave the world in terrible turmoil. I come back, same turmoil. Nothing at all different. Well, outfits are a little different ...
Joss Whedon
#20. Redemption is something you have to fight for in a very personal, down-dirty way. Some of our characters lose that, some stray from that, and some regain it.
Joss Whedon
#21. I keep thinking they're gonna call me. I keep thinking they're gonna crunch the numbers and think, oh, we can make money with this! And they don't.
Joss Whedon
#22. My deal with Marvel is I have a consulting deal with them as well as a contract to make 'Avengers.' That means I'll read all the scripts, I'll look at cuts.
Joss Whedon
#23. I like to think that I'm a populist entertainer, but I'm a little bit idiosyncratic, and sometimes the networks wouldn't really roll with that.
Joss Whedon
#24. I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that's been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it's been in development.
Joss Whedon
#25. I'm not big on regret; I don't spend a lot of time on it.
Joss Whedon
#26. I walk. I talk. I shop. I sneeze. I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out, and I don't sleep on a bed of bones.
Joss Whedon
#27. On one level, I must never lose touch with my audience. But I must, at some point, stop trying to get everybody to like me, and be true to the thing I think I need to say.
Joss Whedon
#28. When I read [the script] and saw that it was my fanboy wet dream of an Avengers script and that [Agent] Coulson was a big part of it, that was the great day for me. I just drove around the streets with the script in the other seat, giggling.
Joss Whedon
#29. I get recognized just often enough to keep my ego bouncing along, but not so much that I can't go places.
Joss Whedon
#30. TV's like whitewater rafting: Without rocks, there wouldn't be rapids, and it wouldn't be as much fun.
Joss Whedon
#31. I'll always protect what I'm working on. Which is why more and more of it is stuff only I can ruin.
Joss Whedon
#32. I've Got Him! You've got to keep at her. Forget all your training
she's fought you a thousand times."
"Don't presume to run my team, you little tart-"
(Colossus throws Emma at Danger)
"Yes. I see how it works. Normally, I wouldn't have done that.
Joss Whedon
#33. The goal is always about the next story. It's always about the thing I haven't done before. It's about learning, or it's about becoming better, and it's about whatever story grabs hold of me.
Joss Whedon
#34. I don't actually have anything against anybody, unless their belief precludes everybody else's ... I am an atheist and an absurdist and I have been for many years. I've actually taken a huge amount of flack for that.
Joss Whedon
#37. I have a pathological fear of confrontation. I'm working on that.
Joss Whedon
#38. I like Victorian children's novels extremely a lot. If I would say I collect anything, that's what I'll hunt for now and again at old book stores.
Joss Whedon
#39. I am a fan of sequels even though they are inevitably awful.
Joss Whedon
#40. I go to movies expecting to have a whole experience. If I want a movie that doesn't end, I'll go to a French movie. That's a betrayal of trust to me. A movie has to be complete within itself; it can't just build off the first one or play variations.
Joss Whedon
#41. People always say I write a lot of pop culture references. Can somebody please count the pop culture references in 'Firefly?' Because I don't know how to put this to you, but there was one. I referenced The Beatles in the pilot.
Joss Whedon
#42. Something like 'Much Ado' happens, and even 'Avengers' happens because of the years of building connections and doing the work and proving yourself.
Joss Whedon
#43. You have a responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself.
Joss Whedon
#44. Every time you work on a project, it's a little vacation from the project you're working on the other 23 hours. That's the thing - it replenishes you to do something else.
Joss Whedon
#45. A writer is supposed to have anonymity.
Joss Whedon
#46. What you cut out becomes part of the story you tell.
Joss Whedon
#47. The news isn't there to tell you what happened. It's there to tell you what it wants you to hear or what it thinks you want to hear.
Joss Whedon
#48. I love a straightforward character. I am the guy who loves Cyclops on the 'X-Men', because he is square.
Joss Whedon
#49. I'm totally cool. I'm totally calm, and I'm totally cool. My calm is exceeded only by my cool. Which is total. Here we go.
Joss Whedon
#50. You learn something every time you make a mistake.
Joss Whedon
#51. When it comes to the iconic moments, you sort of have to take all of those things and distill them the same way the costumers do and everybod Distill them and then find your own. The most iconic moment in the movie is, assuming they do, when they assemble.
Joss Whedon
#52. I've been in this business for a long while, but it's not like I've been waiting tables. Since I started writing, I've only worked on things that I love. I've had a lot of heartbreak, but you don't become an artist and not expect that.
Joss Whedon
#53. I don't know a lot of show runners. I mean I met a lot of them in picket lines. I'm not part of a, like, secret society or pickup basketball game. As far as I'm concerned, pick-up basketball games are secret societies. They confuse me. I've never been a networker or I've never been very social.
Joss Whedon
#54. I still believe that even though 'The Empire Strikes Back' is better in innumerable ways than 'Star Wars,' 'Star Wars' wins.
Joss Whedon
#55. Faith in God means believing absolutely in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers.
Joss Whedon
#56. 'Buffy' is about growing up. 'Angel' is really about already having grown up, dealing with what you've done, and redemption.
Joss Whedon
#57. The problem is I want to do everything. I really love all of it, and I love every aspect of movie-making and storytelling, and I love television, I love the Internet. I wish I had time to do absolutely everything.
Joss Whedon
#58. People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy.
Joss Whedon
#60. I don't understand why or how anyone ever pulled off the whole idea of 'women are inferior.'
Joss Whedon
#61. If I had created reality television I would have had a much greater influence, but then I would have had to KILL MYSELF.
Joss Whedon
#62. I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.
Joss Whedon
#63. If every vampire who said he was at The Crucifixion, was actually there, it would have been like Woodstock ...
Joss Whedon
#64. Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace.
Joss Whedon
#65. I believe we are the only sentient beings in the universe, and I believe that 500 years from now, we will still be the only sentient beings around.
Joss Whedon
#66. I kept telling my mom that reading comic books would pay off.
Joss Whedon
#67. Misogyny ... is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who is confronted with it.
Joss Whedon
#68. Now there's us, staking out our piece of cinematic turf (might be small but
it's ours). And the music has to fit the vision as specifically as it did for [Star Wars and The Matrix.] OUR music comes from THEIR music, this scrappled bunch. It is spare, intimate, mournful and indefatigable.
Joss Whedon
#69. Two things that matter to me. Emotional resonance and rocket launchers.
Joss Whedon
#70. When I created Buffy, I wanted to create a female icon, but I also wanted to be very careful to surround her with men that not only have no problem with the idea of a female leader, but were in fact engaged and even attracted to the idea.
Joss Whedon
#71. You go to movies to see people you love suffer - that's why you go to the movies. You don't go to see a movie about a guy who already knows he has a wonderful life.
Joss Whedon
#72. You either have to write or you shouldn't be writing. That's all.
Joss Whedon
#73. We need narrative; it feeds us in a particular way, and deconstructing it completely before you've actually experienced it, I think it leaves us unfed.
Joss Whedon
#74. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women.
Joss Whedon
#75. Do you love me? What? Do you? I love you. I don't know if I trust you. Maybe you shouldn't do either. Maybe I'm the one who should decide!
Joss Whedon
#76. Uh, hey, I got a idea. Instead of us hanging around playing art critic 'til I get pinched by the man, how's about we move away from this eerie-ass piece of work, and get on with our increasingly eerie-ass day. How's that?
Joss Whedon
#77. I always enjoy conversation more if there is some substance to it - which is a just incredibly hilarious thing for me to say because for many, many years I was the guy whose only contribution to any conversation was, 'There was a funny 'Simpson's' joke about that.'
Joss Whedon
#78. If you think that happiness means total peace, you will never be happy. Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace. It will always be in conflict. If you accept that, everything gets a lot better.
Joss Whedon
#79. How did you find me here?
If I was blind, I would see you.
Stay with me.
Forever. That's the whole point. I'll never leave. Not even if you kill me.
Joss Whedon
#80. I think Spider-Man [film], the first one particularly, really figured out the formula of, "Oh, tell the story that they told in the comic. It was compelling. That's why it's iconic."
Joss Whedon
#81. It's not any huge secret that I'm an atheist.
Joss Whedon
#82. I'm not a control freak - I'm a control enthusiast.
Joss Whedon
#83. I love all genres. The only thing I get stymied by is the Family Drama. I don't necessarily know how to approach that.
Joss Whedon
#84. I do listen to music. Movie scores, exclusively, because it's all about mood and nonspecificity. I love the way modern movie scoring is all about nonspecificity. You know, if I shuffled the tracks from 'Inception,' I challenge you to tell me which is which.
Joss Whedon
#85. I don't have a particular ambition in any medium. I just want to keep telling stories. If somebody pays me, also good.
Joss Whedon
#86. Running a TV show is always running a TV show; it's never not running a TV show.
Joss Whedon
#87. My favorite part of Comic-Con? The groupies.
Joss Whedon
#88. Every kid who hated grownups becomes a grownup. Well, except the ones who died.
Joss Whedon
#90. I think it's always important for academics to study popular culture, even if the thing they are studying is idiotic. If it's successful or made a dent in culture, then it is worthy of study to find out why.
Joss Whedon
#91. The absolute favorite part of Comic-Con is seeing like a Mass Effect guy hanging out with a Sailor Moon, and they're just having a great time. Nerds, we love what we love with a passion and sometimes it's an angry passion, and to see that all sort of bleed out and everybody just connect
Joss Whedon
#92. I love TV in a way that I don't love any other medium.
Joss Whedon
#93. I designed 'Buffy' to be an icon, to be an emotional experience, to be loved in a way that other shows can't be loved. Because it's about adolescence, which is the most important thing people go through in their development, becoming an adult.
Joss Whedon
#94. 'The Sixth Sense' is fine the second time around, but honestly, the first time around, it's dazzling.
Joss Whedon
#95. I loved teaching and I did a lot of work as a teacher's assistant in college, and my favorite experience was basically getting a laugh from a bunch of people because they had just understood something.
Joss Whedon
#96. Even in the darkness, every color can be found. And every day of rain brings water flowing to things growing in the ground.
Joss Whedon
#97. I write to be the characters that I am not.
Joss Whedon
#100. I always tend to think just left of center, to remove myself from the world by one step. It is very freeing, and it's a particular way of coming at stories and looking at them that I find the most beautiful stuff that I know comes from, ultimately.
Joss Whedon
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