Graphic Novel Quotes

#1. Maybe I'd be a storyboard artist. Graphic novel/comic book artist. Backup dancer. Singer. It would be cool to focus on one of these full time. But I like seeing them all intertwine.

Jade Hassoune

#2. People are so afraid to say the word 'comic'. It makes you think of a grown man with pimples, a ponytail and a big belly. Change it to 'graphic novel' and that disappears.

Marjane Satrapi

#3. I don't think anyone has written a great graphic novel.

Ted Rall

#4. To me any given story has its appropriate form. There might be some story I get involved with that's begging to be a graphic novel, so that will have to be that way.

Dave Eggers

#5. 'Diary of a Teenage Girl' was my first American movie. It was my first movie in an American accent. It's based on a graphic novel, which was written in 2002 by someone called Phoebe Gloeckner. It was turned into a play by Marielle Heller, who then wrote it as a screenplay for Sundance Labs.

Bel Powley

#6. When I put together a graphic novel, I don't think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.

Ted Rall

#7. To me, one of the big fears of doing a big huge graphic novel is locking yourself into one style and getting halfway through it and going, 'Oh I made the wrong choice,' which is a recurring nightmare I have.

Adrian Tomine

#8. The language in a comic book or a graphic novel and the cinematographic language are really not the same language. They are false brother and sister. It's not at all the same.

Marjane Satrapi

#9. Sqwaak!" from Fletcher, the environmental crime fighting parrot in The Big Belch graphic novel by Kay Wood.

Kay Wood

#10. I hate this word 'graphic novel.' It is a term publishing houses have created for the bourgeois so they wouldn't be ashamed of buying comics ... I'm not a graphic novelist. I am a cartoonist and I make comics and I am very happy about it.

Marjane Satrapi

#11. I think the problem with the term graphic novel is it sounds pompous, it sounds pretentious, whereas on the continent, they call it an album, which to me sounds, it's got more much of a connotation of a kind of a music single and an album collection.

Dave Gibbons

#12. That partially due to the world of media and commerce, the idea of a comic book has been lost in the ghetto, whereas the graphic novel is now being held up as something to aspire to and as something that's respectable for adults to read.

Adrian Tomine

#13. I started on the original comics from Stan Lee and all the artists and storytellers did from there, and I got to the graphic novel that Chris Clairmont did, which is the one Stryker comes from - 'God Loves, Man Kills', which is a brilliant story.

Josh Helman

#14. I knew that we'd have a big following because the graphic novel [ The Walking Dead] is so popular, and I knew that with Frank Darabont and Gale Ann Hurd at the helm that we were doing something very special.

Laurie Holden

#15. I don't like 'graphic novel.' It's a word that publishers created for the bourgeois to read comics without feeling bad. Comics is just a way of narrating - it's just a media type.

Marjane Satrapi

#16. I first became an Alan Moore fan in Covent Garden on a Saturday afternoon in 1987, when I bought a copy of 'Watchmen,' his graphic novel about ageing superheroes and nuclear apocalypse.

Susanna Clarke

#17. I've got an original graphic novel called 'The Indian and the Bandit' that I'm writing with a childhood friend.

Michael McMillian

#18. I think with something like 'Watchmen' you can genuinely call that a graphic novel because it has the weight and the intent of a proper novel and it also is the complete story.

Dave Gibbons

#19. Long before 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid', 'Dork Diaries', and the graphic novel explosion, only a small press like Tricycle was willing to take a risk on such an innovative format.

Marissa Moss

#20. In many ways, my entire graphic novel career was a long diversion. Originally, all I wanted to do was to be an underground cartoonist and maybe bring out a groovy underground mag.

Alan Moore

#21. I would love to collaborate on a graphic novel with an artist - I'm terrible at drawing but I really love that genre.

Matthea Harvey

#22. I never wanted to make a graphic novel. As soon as you become a 'writer,' you have to be intelligent all the time ... I like the fact that I have the right once in a while to say silly things.

Marjane Satrapi

#23. Personally, I'd never seen a graphic novel. I knew they existed because friends of mine like Jonathan Ross collect them and some very literate and intelligent people really rate the graphic novel as a form.

Stephen Fry

#24. Considering my specialization in architecture, I'm not surprised that the first graphic novel to thoroughly engage, not to say captivate, me is Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor's 'Batman: Death by Design.'

Martin Filler

#25. I wrote a graphic novel called 'Soul Stealer' with big, beautiful, epic artwork by Chris Shy. It grew into a trilogy.

Michael Easton

#26. One way of understanding a graphic novel is that it's an ambitious comic and one way or another my comics have had ambitions. I have no problem with escapism. When I get my depressions all I want to do is escape reality.

Art Spiegelman

#27. You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid.

Bill Watterson

#28. I lose patience with long stories. I get people who go, "Crumb, do some long stories, do a graphic novel." Novel-schmovel.

Robert Crumb

#29. If a novel doesn't have well-developed three-dimensional principal characters, wouldn't it be a graphic novel without the graphics?

Michael Kroft

#30. I was a serious comic collector and fanboy as a kid. I wanted very badly to draw comic books for a lot of my childhood and early adolescence. So when you have an unfulfilled dream like that, when years later you find yourself in a position to make a graphic novel - hell yeah, I'm going to do that.

Anthony Bourdain

#31. A typical twenty-page short story would work quite well as a graphic novel. A single graphic novel of maybe 120 pages would condense down into a short story quite nicely.

Richard K. Morgan

#32. Playing Destroyo, who was sort of a Silence Of The Lambs type character, I'd say I was wearing about 50 pounds of rubber and foam rubber and makeup. But I had no idea who The Tick was. I'm not a big graphic-novel guy. I don't even know if The Tick was a graphic novel!

Kurt Fuller

#33. 'Just looking at pictures' used to be considered cheating. No longer. The graphic novel is booming. Comics, heavily illustrated texts, books with no words are now accepted as reading.

Jon Scieszka

#34. If I had to rank my skills, I have a long way to go before I can write a good graphic novel.

Ted Rall

#35. The script for what would eventually become my first graphic novel, 'Cairo,' sort of came to me in kind of a bolt of lightning within 24 hours of having moved to that city. Just a jumble of characters and narratives and interesting things that I was seeing and experiencing for the first time.

G. Willow Wilson

#36. Graphic novel genre become really quite popular. It's really a big screen film genre that they have successfully moved into the small screen.

Dustin Clare

#37. The ability to get inside your character's head in a graphic novel is really fun and useful because one, you can really define the character's voice and two, it's a way easier way to convey what the character's thinking by actually laying out what he's thinking.

Eric Kripke

#38. I love print fiction, but sometimes when I'm reading a good graphic novel or manga, I find myself envying those who work in an illustrated format.

Jane Lindskold

#39. When you hold a graphic novel in your hands, you're holding artist blood made ink.

Molly Crabapple

#40. For 'American Born Chinese,' my first graphic novel with First Second Books, I did mostly 'memory' research. It's fiction, but I pulled heavily from my own childhood.

Gene Luen Yang

#41. That pompous phrase (graphic novel) was thought up by some idiot in the marketing department of DC. I prefer to call them Big Expensive Comics.

Alan Moore

#42. When you work on a graphic novel or a film with people you've been together through a lot and you've exposed your secrets and weaker sides to each other.

Etgar Keret

#43. I'm a graphic-novel guy. I can't handle the wait for monthly or bi-monthly comics; I need the story finished so I can buy the whole thing.

Chris Wooding

#44. Comics are actually dubbed by euphemistic label of graphic novel, which became a big deal.

Francoise Mouly

#45. You start to get nervous when the value of a comic book or graphic novel is relative to the achievements of some other medium.

Adrian Tomine

#46. When I read 'Watchmen,' it changed my view of so many things. It was the first time I'd read a graphic novel really like that.

Joel Silver

#47. In the '40s and '50s, a lot of teachers and librarians saw the graphic novel as the enemy of reading.

Gene Luen Yang

#48. I've been drawing since I could hold a pencil. I've got many ideas that are still to be drawn out, but the couple collaborations in development are with other actor/writers for graphic novel/comic that could potentially become a film project.

Jade Hassoune

#49. Writing from the perspective of women survivors of violence, Moore is at his most appealing; though his writing about sex and brutality can verge on the exploitative, he sometimes reveals an unexpected sympathy with dominated women.

Zoe Brigley

#50. I firmly believe that if you can't fool all of the people all of the time you should start breeding them for stupidity. - Weisshaupt

Dave Sim

#51. My mom says . . . there are bad people who hurt others for fun . . . and there are good people who do it by accident. Like, they make a mistake?

I think you're a good person.

Svetlana Chmakova

#52. Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.

Stan Lee

#53. Show some respect. They were your grandparents. -Batman
Just names and dusty frames on the wall to me. -Damien
I take exception to that. There is not a speck of dust collecting on those portraits. -Alfred

Peter J. Tomasi

#54. There is a madness, yes, this is true. Few mortals possess it, the willingness to step away from the protection of sanity. To walk into the wild wood of madness ...

Neil Gaiman

#55. Our fine Governor called me here to ask me to talk to you
said you didn't seem too happy here. He knows we're pals. He wanted me to just
I don't know, make sure you weren't going to cause any trouble or something.

Robert Kirkman

#56. Sometimes, if you close your eyes and keep still, you can be invisible. Ostriches know this." - Constantine

Jamie Delano

#57. And that to me is something. Coming to an understanding of who you are in the midst of discovering who you aren't.

Brian Azzarello

#58. People who are too sensitive go crazy, remember that

Paul Pope

#59. When the worst that can happen already has, there's not much left to be afraid of anymore,right?

Ian Sta. Maria

#60. Me? I like wearing a condom. It means I'm having sex. I already spend most of my time NOT wearing one. It's like a tuxedo - I enjoy putting one on for special occasions.

David Mazzucchelli

#61. Cheap! But not as cheap as your girlfriend.

Warren Ellis

#62. But when I close my eyes, I'm more like THIS under the surface: I'm laughing and scheming and dreaming.

Laura Lee Gulledge

#63. Don't say I'm lucky. Ever.

Faith Erin Hicks

#64. Penelope? Thank you. For not leaving me alone to deal with this . . . when things got hard. other people would have. You're a true friend.

Svetlana Chmakova

#65. You retain the Ki. Whether or not you become a warrior is for you to discover.

Richard Finney

#66. Everything in life has a price; each choice we make is a transaction.
It's only with the passage of time that we realize sometimes much to our regret whether the cost was worth it.

David Hontiveros

#67. If formality and courtesy take over the feelings . . . how silly and meaningless these things could become. And despite all this, I still take part in it!

Fumio Obata

#68. Please read this [book] so I'll have someone to talk about it with? I'll get you cigarettes.

Fiona Staples

#69. I'm sure this is a diversionary ploy. But that doesn't mean it isn't real.
-Abe Sapien

John Arcudi

#70. Death is complicated."

-Johann Kraus

John Arcudi

#71. True. The school admin decided that a girls clothes were more important than her education.

Svetlana Chmakova

#72. I, the great and powerful D.S. will create a harem for all the women in the world!!!! For a woman, no greater joy exists in the entire universe than to fuck me, the ultimate sex symbol!!!

Kazushi Hagiwara

#73. Does Batman ever NOT have a plan...?

Mark Waid

#74. Throughout these pages, my brush weeps in sorrow for what happened in Tiananmen Square.

Not for the first time, a government was turning the guns on its people. Has the world learned nothing from history?

Morgan Chua

#75. Every goodbye calls for preparation, but most times, life takes us by surprise.

Elisabetta Gnone

#76. What if . . . What if I am stupid? Like people say?

Svetlana Chmakova

#77. That's the exciting part about capitalism. It's like surfing, you have to catch the wave. - Martin Peter (aka Vermin Gobsmack)

Jamie Delano

#78. Boomerang arrow, Kate
It comes back to you in the end. Boomerang. Respect it.

Matt Fraction

#79. Live a LOT to get better material. Let yourself feel everything

Laura Lee Gulledge

#80. The one who's afraid has already lost.

Elisabetta Gnone

#81. I don't want to leave.

Svetlana Chmakova

#82. Alice: I didn't know that cheshire cats grinned. In fact, I didn't know that cats could grin.
Duchess: They can, and most of 'em do.

Rod Espinosa

#83. Life is too short to be spent doing just one thing!

Radkris

#84. They're right. We're not fighting for the people anymore, Falcon... Look at us. We're just fighting.

Mike Millar

#85. It would ha' been a good deal easier, if ye'd only been a witch.

Diana Gabaldon

#86. You see, Evey, all the world's a stage. And everything else ...
... is vaudeville.

Alan Moore

#87. Sometimes when you focus on trying to save the world... You miss those closest to you when they need you the most. Gray (witching hour)

Loeb, Jeph

#88. Maybe I'll really try to kiss her, even if I fall through her like a raindrop.

James B. Willard

#89. Would any of you like to share your career aspirations within the class? Jim?

I dunno, to be honest, I was just hoping to be able to keep the demons away...

Jillian Tamaki

#90. Sometimes just looking into a person's eyes can tell a graphic story and a brilliant novel if you have the ability to turn it into words.

L.L. Caulton

#91. Perhaps only that revenge is ultimately unsatisfying. It cant make up for the evil done to you, but it can destroy the remaining good in your life.

Bill Willingham

#92. Life has a time limit. And we are changing all the time. So are our ambitions, desires, and purposes . . . The important thing is to find something that never changes in you.

Fumio Obata

#93. I want to get to know this other me, but I don't know her well enough yet to be her all the time

Laura Lee Gulledge

#94. I won't read a new graphic comic novel until the writer has completed the entire series. I got burned a few times when I got turned on to a book, plowed through it only to find out the author was in the middle of writing the next.

Nick Offerman

#95. People going to see the Mona Lisa, not to look at it, but because it's the Mona Lisa

Paul Pope

#96. I think there's as much violence, in a way, as a scene with two women having a cup of coffee in a Ruth Rendell novel - in terms of emotional violence and the violence you can inflict with language - as there is in the most graphic kind of serial killer/slasher novel you can think of.

Mark Billingham

#97. By the time you figure out how the world really works, you've already lost about everything you'd hope to keep

Paul Pope

#98. After being dry for a couple a weeks, three cocktails went down quicker than a boner in a busted rubber.

Brian Azzarello