Top 100 Brian K Vaughan Quotes
#2. Why do you always make it sound like everything was better before I was born?"
"It's not you, Mitchell. There was just more civility back then. We still had respect for authority, I guess. This is what happens when no one trusts the people in power.
Brian K. Vaughan
#3. I'm totally open to it being a movie or a television series or whatever, but truthfully, if no one wants to do it right, I'm also happy for 'Ex Machina' to only ever exist as a comic book.
Brian K. Vaughan
#4. Thirty chapters of good deeds never tells you a whole man's story.
Brian K. Vaughan
#5. You know, for a pacifist, you sure beg to get stabbed a lot
Brian K. Vaughan
#7. Never worry what other people think of you, because no one ever thinks of you.
Brian K. Vaughan
#8. Just go out there and get your heart broken in, so it'll be ready when you really need it.
Brian K. Vaughan
#9. There are a lot of differing opinions on that. Some people think you should change out more, but I think changing just 20 percent is less stressful on the aquarium and fish. Once you get used to the regimen, it's pretty easy.
Brian K. Vaughan
#10. Comics brought me to the dance. It'll always be my first loyalty.
Brian K. Vaughan
#12. Well, you know what they say, the reader is the final contributor. Cheers for doing the heavy lifting.
Brian K. Vaughan
#13. Sorry, ladies. I guess that's our cue. We like to storm into town, inflict maximum damage, and then disappear ... like a KISS concert.
Brian K. Vaughan
#14. We're all aliens to someone. Even among our own people, most of us still feel like complete foreigners from time to time.
Brian K. Vaughan
#16. Oh God. Goddammit. I never got to see the pyramids. Or the Taj Mahal. I ... I never even got to leave the country."
"Don't sweat it, brother. You got to live in NYC. You didn't miss shit.
Brian K. Vaughan
#17. Then why did you risk everything to be with him?
Because your son is so goddamn beautiful.
Ha. I assure you, looks aren't forever.
Oh, I know.
I wasn't talking about his looks.
Brian K. Vaughan
#18. You remind me of my late sister, little one. As I once told her, the headstrong may win many battles ... but only the strong of heart will survive the war.
Brian K. Vaughan
#20. I'm not going to stand here and be eaten by some bitch's dinosaur. I am finally doing something with my life.
Brian K. Vaughan
#22. Your own creations are your own children; you gave life to them, so you'll always have, if not more passion to them, more connections to them.
Brian K. Vaughan
#23. They hurt you. You hurt 'em back. Or maybe it is the other way around. Whatever. Someday you might find a way to forgive each other. But it won't be like it used to 'cause that pain never really goes away.
Brian K. Vaughan
#24. A comic script is basically a love letter from you to your artist,
Brian K. Vaughan
#25. I guess my journey with comics began with stuff like Spider-Man and Batman. I started off with mainstream superhero stuff, which I've never abandoned.
Brian K. Vaughan
#26. I never want readers to be comfortable, to feel like we're in a comedy or a drama. Life is never just one of those things. Life is a balance of all those things.
Brian K. Vaughan
#30. All writing is the same: It's just making up lies until it starts to sound like the truth. That's what I do.
Brian K. Vaughan
#31. Anyone who thinks one book has all the answers hasn't read enough books.
Brian K. Vaughan
#33. I'm not afraid of the world. I'm afraid of a world without you.
Brian K. Vaughan
#34. I like animal sidekicks. They seem to be a pretty cool trope of post-apocalyptic fiction - just because if you're going to have this lone protagonist, they're going to need someone to talk to. Dogs are overused, and cats are dumb. So that leaves monkeys.
Brian K. Vaughan
#35. Come back with a healthy monkey, or don't come back at all.
Brian K. Vaughan
#36. You'll never understand the way the worlds really work until you surround yourself with people from all sorts of weird backgrounds.
Brian K. Vaughan
#37. The more you care about someone, the more likely it is that your eventual parting of ways will be as sudden as it is baffling.
Brian K. Vaughan
#38. I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.
Brian K. Vaughan
#39. I never liked working on editorial-driven comics. I just didn't see what was the point. They don't pay well enough for me to write other people's ideas.
Brian K. Vaughan
#40. Victor: You guys have some kind of rallying cry? You know, "Avengers assemble?" "It's clobberin' time?" "Hulk smash?"
Nico: "Try not to die.
Brian K. Vaughan
#41. Granny used to describing giving your life as "ultimate sacrifice", but I don't know about that. Dying is definitely the LAST sacrifice you can make, but sometimes, it's your first one that sets the tone for everything that follows.
Brian K. Vaughan
#42. When you're dead set on doing the right thing, sometimes it's hard to recognize that you're doing it in the wrong way.
Brian K. Vaughan
#43. There's always money in conflict."
"Says the diehard peacenik?"
"Oh, I abhor real violence, but fake violence is fucking brilliant.
Brian K. Vaughan
#44. Having children changes you forever, as a writer and as a human being. I hope it's for the better on both counts, but I guess we'll see.
Brian K. Vaughan
#45. That was the appealing thing about comics: There literally is no budget in comics. You're only limited by your imagination.
Brian K. Vaughan
#46. I don't start a story until I know where it's going to end.
Brian K. Vaughan
#47. Natalya: It was our favorite sister of NASA who guilt me into putting my tits on line to rescuing you helpless ornaments.
Brian K. Vaughan
#48. A lot of people who came into my family's life looking like heroes ended up acting more like villains.
Brian K. Vaughan
#49. Each of us has been falling apart since day one, Chase. We just have to find a way to fall apart together.
Brian K. Vaughan
#51. Everything good in New York used to be something awful, I guess."
"And everything awful used to be something good.
Brian K. Vaughan
#52. Well, I've always wanted to call my son Barr."
"Like a tavern? Like a soap?"
"My father's name is Barr."
"Oh. And I love it!
Brian K. Vaughan
#53. Bro, all you've got is a book. How do you plan to fight our parents? With literacy?
Brian K. Vaughan
#54. No, only villains try to change the whole world. The rest of us take it one person at a time.
Brian K. Vaughan
#55. My name is Hazel. I started out as an idea, but I ended up something more. Not much more, to be honest. It's not like I grow up to become some great war hero or any sort of all important savior... but thanks to these two, at least I get to grow old.
Not everybody does.
Brian K. Vaughan
#56. Sorry, kid. Whedon got it wrong. Stakes don't kill vampires, they just give us heartburn.
Brian K. Vaughan
#57. There are only three forms of high art: the symphony, the illustrated children's book and the board game.
Brian K. Vaughan
#59. To try and imagine that I'm another person is always going to be hard - whether I'm writing about a truck driver or someone who is gay, who's trans, who is of a different ethnicity or creed. But it would be boring if I always had to write about myself and my limited viewpoint.
Brian K. Vaughan
#60. Admit it, you're probably a very different person at work than you are at home.
Everyone needs to be someone else sometimes.
Brian K. Vaughan
#61. I've always seen 'Y' as an unconventional romance between a boy and his protector. It was always about the last boy on Earth becoming the last man on Earth, and the women who made that possible.
Brian K. Vaughan
#62. I remember when I was a kid and I would go to the comic-book store, I would have no idea what was going on in that month's issues. Sometimes I wouldn't even know what comics were coming out until I walked into the store.
Brian K. Vaughan
#63. What cruel creatures men are. Our bodies tell us to love so many, but there's room in our hearts for so few.
Brian K. Vaughan
#64. Younger writers are always looking for "blurbs," one of the few words that sounds exactly as awful as the crime it's describing.
Brian K. Vaughan
#65. If a good editor will let me tell my story with the right artist, I'm happy.
Brian K. Vaughan
#66. Not many people read my stuff, but I really like the ones that do.
Brian K. Vaughan
#67. I am a big theater fan. It's mostly just being pretentious, I think, and trying to look smart.
Brian K. Vaughan
#68. Comics are essentially films with fewer frames per second.
Brian K. Vaughan
#69. A child isn't a symbol, it's a child! It needs applesauce and, and, and playpens and an ass-load of other things we can't provide while we're on the goddamn lam!
Just to be clear. Your exact words to me were: "Please shoot it in my twat."
Yeah. I know.
Brian K. Vaughan
#71. Together, my parents had learned to be much more than "the sum of their parts", whatever that means.
Separately, they were kind of just a mess.
Brian K. Vaughan
#72. The only way the dead live on is through the people they leave behind.
Brian K. Vaughan
#73. I'm not buried in that plot, Karoline. Some woman claiming to be me from the future is."
"Why do they call it a plot, anyway?"
"Because this is how every story ends.
Brian K. Vaughan
#74. My mom once told me that a good relationship isn't where the other person makes you feel better, but where they make *you* better.
Brian K. Vaughan
#75. I wanted to write a story about a future where everyone has a secret identity, in part because the Internet no longer exists.
Brian K. Vaughan
#77. Dying is one of the few experiences we'll eventually all enjoy firsthand, and like most shit that's commonplace, it's boring to dwell on.
Brian K. Vaughan
#78. Over the years, we met every kind of person imaginable. But no one makes worse first impressions than writers.
Brian K. Vaughan
#80. Even though I was trained in play writing and screenwriting, when I sat down to write a comic book for the first time, Alan Moore was first and foremost in my mind.
Brian K. Vaughan
#81. In film, you have the luxury of accomplishing what you need in 24 frames every second. Comics, you only have five or six panels a page to do that.
Brian K. Vaughan
#82. As much as I'm enjoying stuff out here in Hollywood, I will always think of myself as a comic-book writer who does film and television, not a film and TV writer who occasionally does comics.
Brian K. Vaughan
#83. It's cool because I think 'Ex Machina' is a little bit under the radar, which is always when I do my best work - when I feel like no one's paying attention.
Brian K. Vaughan
#84. How is it possible that our parents lied to us?"
"Lets see: Santa, the Tooth Fairy,the Easter bunny,um, God. You're the prettiest kid in school. This wont hurt a bit. Your face will freeze like that ... "
"Everythings going to be alright.
Brian K. Vaughan
#85. Death is just a chapter break in a never-ending tale, Nico.
Brian K. Vaughan
#86. It's time to climb off our high horses and step into the shit.
Brian K. Vaughan
#87. The biggest inspiration for everything I do is, of course, my wife, playwright Ruth McKee.
Brian K. Vaughan
#88. I was embarrassingly well-versed in Marvel lore, so it was pretty easy to slip into that world. But really, already, by the time I'd started writing superhero comics, my dream was really to be writing my own characters.
Brian K. Vaughan
#89. There's an old saying, Zill. Freedom can't be given, only earned.
Brian K. Vaughan
#90. Christ, I walk through an inferno unscatched, then singe my ass on the flight back."
[ ... ]
"You guys are the ... the heart and brain of the Great Machine."
"Yeah? Then you're the inflamed anus."
"You're not the brain, by the way.
Brian K. Vaughan
#91. When I was in college, I was belittling the woman who later become my wife for not knowing who Boba Fett was, and she responded by asking me if I knew who the Prime Minister of Israel was. Surprisingly? Not Mon Mothma.
Brian K. Vaughan
#92. I write the book for one person - for Fiona [Staples, the artist]. I spend a lot of time just thinking how she'll react to things and manipulating her into drawing perverse, horrific things. It's a really weird job but I enjoy it.
Brian K. Vaughan
#93. For a lot of arcane shipping reasons, new comics, even digital ones, have a long history of only being released on Wednesdays.
Brian K. Vaughan
#94. Stupid old boys' network ... That's why we're not running the world, huh, girlie? 'Cause when women see a younger version of us, it just makes us angry.
Brian K. Vaughan
#95. Not a word of my writing has ever been changed by another person's hands, and I don't think many screenwriters can say that.
Brian K. Vaughan
#96. Every kid gets "programmed" by their 'rents, Chase. That doesn't mean they have to do as they're told.
Brian K. Vaughan
#97. It doesn't matter who started it or what it's really about ... war usually ends up sucking most for women. Even when we're not fighting the battles ourselves, we somehow always end up with the lion's share of the suffering.
Brian K. Vaughan
#98. You'd never be able to convince someone to give you money to do a bilingual story where you're not translating half of it - you'd drive people crazy. But in comics, you can do whatever your heart desires.
Brian K. Vaughan
#100. There are probably writers who are much more visual than I am and some who are less. I like to think of myself as a happy medium.
Brian K. Vaughan
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