112 Quotes & Sayings By Alan Moore

Alan Moore is a writer and artist most famous for his work on the comic book series Watchmen. He was born in Northampton, England in 1952 and currently lives in Montreal. He has taught at various colleges and universities in the UK, including Manchester University, University of Manchester, University of East Anglia, Goldsmiths College of Art and Design, King's College London, and the University of Northampton.

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My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky. Alan Moore
Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no...
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Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it. Alan Moore
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Thermodynamic miracles.. events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter.. Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold.. that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle. But..if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle.. I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!. Yes. Anybody in the world..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget.. I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come..dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes.. and let's go home. Alan Moore
Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it's seldom when anything...
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Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it's seldom when anything ever really gets resolved. It's taken me a long time to realize that. Alan Moore
A live body and a dead body contain the same...
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A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned? Alan Moore
Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover,...
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Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell. Alan Moore
The past can't hurt you anymore. Not unless you let...
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The past can't hurt you anymore. Not unless you let it. They made you into a victim, Evey. They made you into a statistic. But, that's not the real you. That's not who you are inside. Alan Moore
We are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to...
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We are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Alan Moore
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who watches the watchmen?
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who watches the watchmen? Alan Moore
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You were already in a prison. You've been in a prison all your life. Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all. Your lover lived in the penitentiary that we are all born into, and was forced to rake the dregs of that world for his living. He knew affection and tenderness but only briefly. Eventually, one of the other inmates stabbed him with a cutlass and he drowned upon his own blood. Is that it, Evey? Is that the happiness worth more than freedom? It's not an uncommon story, Evey. Many convicts meet with miserable ends. Your mother. Your father. Your lover. One by one, taken out behind the chemical sheds.. and shot. All convicts, hunched and deformed by the smallness of their cells, the weight of their chains, the unfairness of their sentences. I didn't put you in a prison, Evey. I just showed you the bars.'' You're wrong! It's just life, that's all! It's just how life is. It's what we've got to put up with. It's all we've got. What gives you the right to decide it's not good enough?'' You're in a prison, Evey. You were born in a prison. You've been in a prison so long, you no longer believe there's a world outside. That's because you're afraid, Evey. You're afraid because you can feel freedom closing in upon you. You're afraid because freedom is terrifying. Don't back away from it, Evey. Part of you understands the truth even as part pretends not to. You were in a cell, Evey. They offered you a choice between the death of your principles and the death of your body. You said you'd rather die. You faced the fear of your own death and you were calm and still. The door of the cage is open, Evey. All that you feel is the wind from outside. Alan Moore
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If you wear black, then kindly, irritating strangers will touch your arm consolingly and inform you that the world keeps on turning. They're right. It does. However much you beg it to stop. It turns and lets grenadine spill over the horizon, sends hard bars of gold through my window and I wake up and feel happy for three seconds and then I remember. It turns and tips people out of their beds and into their cars, their offices, an avalanche of tiny men and women tumbling through life.. All trying not to think about what's waiting at the bottom. Sometimes it turns and sends us reeling into each other's arms. We cling tight, excited and laughing, strangers thrown together on a moving funhouse floor. Intoxicated by the motion we forget all the risks. And then the world turns.. And somebody falls off.. And oh God it's such a long way down. Numb with shock, we can only stand and watch as they fall away from us, gradually getting smaller.. Receding in our memories until they're no longer visible. We gather in cemeteries, tense and silent as if for listening for the impact; the splash of a pebble dropped into a dark well, trying to measure its depth. Trying to measure how far we have to fall. No impact comes; no splash. The moment passes. The world turns and we turn away, getting on with our lives.. Wrapping ourselves in comforting banalities to keep us warm against the cold." Time's a great healer."" At least it was quick."" The world keeps turning." Oh Alec–Alec's dead. Alan Moore
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To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head - and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It's an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but that's not the most important thing. It's the work itself. Alan Moore
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The third and, given due consideration, most probable of all my theorems, is that life is ordered by the principles of some religion so peculiar and obscure it has no followers, and none may fathom it, nor know the rituals by which to court its favor. Alan Moore
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I don’t think people realise how vital libraries are or what a colossal danger it would be if we were to lose any more. Having had a truncated school life myself, all of my education from the age of 17 has been self-taught. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for the opportunities the library gave me. Alan Moore
It's early days. A few skeletons are bound to keep...
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It's early days. A few skeletons are bound to keep jumping out of the closet. Alan Moore
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It's funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style. You look at old photographs and everybody has a certain look to them, almost as if they're related. Look at pictures from ten years later and you can see that there's a new kind of face starting to predominate, and that the old faces are fading away and vanishing, never to be seen again. Alan Moore
It was as if life was one great big impersonal...
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It was as if life was one great big impersonal piece of machinery. Alan Moore
Books require titles reading them doesn't
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Books require titles reading them doesn't Alan Moore
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Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night. Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach.Does that answer your Questions, Doctor?. Alan Moore
It is the oldest ironies that are still the most...
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It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace. Alan Moore
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My mother said I broke her heart...but it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us...but within that inch we are free. Alan Moore
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Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse. Alan Moore
Equality and freedom are not luxuries to lightly cast aside....
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Equality and freedom are not luxuries to lightly cast aside. Without them, order cannot long endure before approaching depths beyond imagining. Alan Moore
Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations...
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Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember. Alan Moore
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His sister, in a big turquoise Angora sweater, leaned upon the wood frame of the open nursery door, anxiously looking out to see if he was really going to show, beaming and waving like a pastel colored TV Muppet when she spotted him. Alan Moore
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Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes. Alan Moore
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Does the human heart know chasms so abysmal? Alan Moore
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Evening work is economical. Power comes most cheaply by night. Alan Moore
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Look at him now, poor fellow. That's what a dose of reality does for you... Never touch the stuff myself, you understand. Find it gets in the way of the hallucinations. Alan Moore
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Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends. Alan Moore
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I still can't believe it .. . him comin' here everyday, nobody realizin'. Still, that's life: lotta stuff happens under the waterline. Alan Moore
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Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust. Alan Moore
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It wasn't so much all the sex that robbed me of my moral bearings, but all the narcotics. I must say, there's something about opium that goes very well with lesbianism. Alan Moore
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In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagines past Alan Moore
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I'm 65 years old. Everyday the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time. Alan Moore
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Not thou alone, but all humanity doth in its progress fable emulate. Whence came thy rocket-ships and submarine if not from Nautilus, from Cavorite? Your trustiest companions since the cave, we apparitions guided mankind's tread, our planet, unseen counterpart to thine, as permanent, as ven'rable, as true. On dream's foundation matter's mudyards rest. Two sketching hands, each one the other draws: the fantasies thou've fashioned fashion thee. . Alan Moore
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My thoughts about pornography tend to revolve around the fact that while very few of us are zombies, detectives, cowboys, or spacemen, there are an infinite number of books that are recounting the stories of those lifestyles. However, all of us have some sort of feelings or opinions about sex. And yet the only art form which in any way is able to discuss sex, or depict sex, is this grubby despised under the counter art form, which has absolutely no standards. This was what Lost Girls was intended as a remedy for, that there is no reason why a horny piece of literature, that is purely about sex, could not be as beautiful, as meaningful, and have as absorbing characters as any other piece of fiction. . Alan Moore
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The disciplines of physical exercise, meditation and study aren't terribly esoteric. The means to attain a capability far beyond that of the so-called ordinary person are within the reach of everyone, if their desire and their will are strong enough. I have studied science, art, religion and a hundred different philosophies. Anyone could do as much. By applying what you learn and ordering your thoughts in an intelligent manner it is possible to accomplish almost anything. Possible for an 'ordinary person.' There's a notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridiculous. There is no ordinary person. Alan Moore
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Consciousness, unprovable by scientific standards, is forever, then, the impossible phantom in the predictable biologic machine, and your every thought a genuine supernatural event. Your every thought is a ghost, dancing. Alan Moore
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The only reality we can ever truly know is that of our perceptions, our own consciousness, while that consciousness, and thus our entire reality, is made of nothing but signs and symbols. Nothing but language. Even God requires language before conceiving the Universe. See Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word. Alan Moore
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I leave the human cockroaches to discuss their heroin and child pornography. Alan Moore
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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! YOU'VE READ ABOUT IT IN THE NEWSPAPERS! NOW, SHUDDER AS YOU OBSERVE, BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES, THAT MOST RAREAND RAGIC OF NATURE'S MIS Alan Moore
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People's lives take them strange places. They do strange things, and... well, sometimes they can't talk about them. Alan Moore
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Trust in the fictive process, in the occult interweaving of text and event must be unwavering and absolute. This is the magic place, the mad place at the spark gap between word and world. Alan Moore
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And it's only symbolism puts magic and meaning into anything. You of all people should know that. We can make love amongst the gods, or we can screw on a dirty mattress. It's our choice. Alan Moore
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If we loved Steve Aylett, really loved him in the way that he deserves, a selfless love that genuinely wanted nothing save his happiness and comfort, we'd lobotomise him. Alan Moore
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Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago. Alan Moore
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Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all Alan Moore
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I did it thirty-five minutes ago. Alan Moore
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And I'm thinking about the old man. He'll be pounding on the glass right about now... or maybe not now. Maybe in a while. But he'll be pounding and... will there be blood? I like to imagine so. Yes, I rather think there will be blood. Lots of blood. Blood in extraordinary quantities. Alan Moore
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...She wasn't anyone special. She wasn't that brave, that clever or that strong. She was just somebody that felt cramped by the confines of her life. She was just somebody who had to get out. And she did it! She went out past Vega, out past Moulquet and Lambard! She saw places that aren't even there anymore! And do you know what she said? Her most famous quotation? "Anybody could have done it Alan Moore
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Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious. Alan Moore
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The things that are most popular are usually rubbish, stand up for what’s important, not popular. Alan Moore
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To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children's characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence. It looks to me very much like a significant section of the public, having given up on attempting to understand the reality they are actually living in, have instead reasoned that they might at least be able to comprehend the sprawling, meaningless, but at-least-still-finite 'universes' presented by DC or Marvel Comics. I would also observe that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times. Alan Moore
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How can two people hate so much without knowing each other? Alan Moore
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I don't consider myself as a bad person, on the whole I consider myself a good person, I'm good to my parents. I treat my girl right , , , take her out and buy her stuff. And I go to church every Sunday, But I've decided that just once I wanna do a really bad thing. I mean a really seriously bad thing. 'cause, ya know, like, we're put on this earth with free will. We can choose to do this or that. We can choose to be good or bad. But sometimes I think most people are good and not bad only because they're scared they might go to jail or hell or someplace. Some guy once said: "Anything done out of fear has no moral value" Well, I think that's right. I figure the only way you can be truly good is if you've tried been good, and you've tried being good, and you've tried being bad, and being good feels better. . Alan Moore
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You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it. Alan Moore
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It does not do to rely too much on silent majorities, Evey, for silence is a fragile thing, one loud noise, and its gone. But the people are so cowed and disorganised. A few might take the opportunity to protest, but it'll just be a voice crying in the wilderness. Noise is relative to the silence preceding it. The more absolute the hush, the more shocking the thunderclap. Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations, Evey and it is much, much louder than they care to remember. Alan Moore
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I am but a stranger ... as we all are. Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each others pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it; and that, given luck, sometimes we find one to walk besides us ... at least for a little way. Alan Moore
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People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people. Alan Moore
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Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . They're not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer you're gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe — for one thing — only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe there's worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: “Know thyself”. Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense — the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other. . Alan Moore
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402Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . They're not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer you're gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe — for one thing — only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe there's worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: “Know thyself”. Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense — the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other. . Alan Moore
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I don't consider myself as a bad person, on the whole I consider myself a good person, I'm good to my parents. I treat my girl right , , , take her out and buy her stuff. And I go to church every Sunday, But I've decided that just once I wanna do a really bad thing. I mean a really seriously bad thing. 'cause, ya know, like, we're put on this earth with free will. We can choose to do this or that. We can choose to be good or bad. But sometimes I think most people are good and not bad only because they're scared they might go to jail or hell or someplace. Some guy once said: "Anything done out of fear has no moral value." Well, I think that's right. I figure the only way you can be truly good is if you've tried been good, and you've tried being bad, and being good feels better. . Alan Moore
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There are people. There are stories. The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse if often closer to the truth. Stories shape the world. They exist independently of people, and in places quite devoid of man, there may yet be mythologies. Alan Moore
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Machine. Unexpectedly, I'd invented a time Alan Moore
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The superman exists and he's American. Alan Moore
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They are bright and exciting. Like America. Like its women. Alan Moore
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Murder, other than in the most strict forensic sense, is never soluble. That dark human clot can never melt into a lucid, clear suspension. Our detective fiction tells us otherwise: everything is just neat and cold ballistics. Provide a murderer, a motive and a means, and you have solved the crime. Using this method, the solution to the Second World War is as follows: Hitler. The German economy. Tanks. Thus, for convenience, we reduce the complex events. Alan Moore
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All we ever see of stars are their old photographs. Alan Moore
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Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself. Alan Moore
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Swamp Thing, in Hell: "Demon..How..could God..allow such a place? Etrigan: Think you God built this place, wishing man ill and not lusts uncontrolled or swords unsheathed? Not God, my friend. The truth's more hideous still: These halls were carved by men while yet they breathed. God is no parent or policeman grim dispensing treats or punishments to all. Each soul climbs or descends by its own whim. He mourns, but He cannot prevent their fall. We suffer as we choose. Nothing's amiss. All torments are deserved.. Alan Moore
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Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof. Alan Moore
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There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. Alan Moore
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We are told to remember the idea and not the man. Because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten. But 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I have witnessed firsthand the power of ideas. I've seen people kill in the name of them. But you cannot kiss an idea.. cannot touch it or hold it. Ideas do not bleed. They do not feel pain. They do not love. And it is not an idea that I miss. It is a man. A man that made me remember the 5th of November. A man that I will never forget. Alan Moore
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Reality, at first glance, is a simple thing: the television speaking to you now is real. Your body sunk into that chair in the approach to midnight, a clock ticking at the threshold of awareness. All the endless detail of a solid and material world surrounding you. These things exist. They can be measured with a yardstick, a voltammeter, a weighing scale. These things are real. Then there’s the mind, half-focused on the TV, the settee, the clock. This ghostly knot of memory, idea and feeling that we call ourself also exists, though not within the measurable world our science may describe. Consciousness is unquantifiable, a ghost in the machine, barely considered real at all, though in a sense this flickering mosaic of awareness is the only true reality that we can ever know. The Here-and-Now demands attention, is more present to us. We dismiss the inner world of our ideas as less important, although most of our immediate physical reality originated only in the mind. The TV, sofa, clock and room, the whole civilisation that contains them once were nothing save ideas. Material existence is entirely founded on a phantom realm of mind, whose nature and geography are unexplored. Before the Age of Reason was announced, humanity had polished strategies for interacting with the world of the imaginary and invisible: complicated magic-systems; sprawling pantheons of gods and spirits, images and names with which we labelled powerful inner forces so that we might better understand them. Intellect, Emotion and Unconscious Thought were made divinities or demons so that we, like Faust, might better know them; deal with them; become them. Ancient cultures did not worship idols. Their god-statues represented ideal states which, when meditated constantly upon, one might aspire to. Science proves there never was a mermaid, blue-skinned Krishna or a virgin birth in physical reality. Yet thought is real, and the domain of thought is the one place where gods inarguably ezdst, wielding tremendous power. If Aphrodite were a myth and Love only a concept, then would that negate the crimes and kindnesses and songs done in Love’s name? If Christ were only ever fiction, a divine Idea, would this invalidate the social change inspired by that idea, make holy wars less terrible, or human betterment less real, less sacred? The world of ideas is in certain senses deeper, truer than reality; this solid television less significant than the Idea of television. Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map. Be careful: in the last analysis, reality may be exactly what we think it is. Alan Moore
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Are you like, a crazy person? I’m quite sure they will say so. Alan Moore
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Perhaps this is the purpose of all art, all writing, on the murders, fiction and non-fiction: Simply to participate. Alan Moore
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We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors. Alan Moore
80
Now, as I understand it, the bards were feared. They were respected, but more than that they were feared. If you were just some magician, if you'd pissed off some witch, then what's she gonna do, she's gonna put a curse on you, and what's gonna happen? Your hens are gonna lay funny, your milk's gonna go sour, maybe one of your kids is gonna get a hare-lip or something like that – no big deal. You piss off a bard, and forget about putting a curse on you, he might put a satire on you. And if he was a skilful bard, he puts a satire on you, it destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing, at what a twat you were. Alan Moore
81
Come, dry your eyes, for you are LIFE, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes, and let's go home. Alan Moore
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So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit. Alan Moore
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...My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was. I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you? Alan Moore
84
Janey accuses me of chasing jailbait. She bursts into angry tears, asking if it's because she's getting older. It's true. She's aging more noticeably every day–while I am standing still. I prefer the stillness here. I am tired of Earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives. Alan Moore
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Do not weep. Being is enough. There, that is all. I am done... Alan Moore
86
LSD was an incredible experience. Not that I’m recommending it for anybody else; but for me it kind of — it hammered home to me that reality was not a fixed thing. That the reality that we saw about us every day was one reality, and a valid one — but that there were others, different perspectives where different things have meaning that were just as valid. That had a profound effect on me. Alan Moore
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I've proved my point. I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up as a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else.. Only you won't admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling! God you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that.. Something like that happened to me, you know. I.. I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another.. If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha! But my point is.. My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you? I mean, you're not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last world war? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! Telegraph poles! Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for.. it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing? . Alan Moore
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If gods are transcendent ideas, then the idea of a god IS a god. Alan Moore
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There, did you think to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. Farewell. Alan Moore
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I'm the idea of the human imagination, which, when you think about it, is the only thing we can really be certain ISN'T imaginary. Alan Moore
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Some things are hard to imagine. Can you conceive of excessive contentment, for example? Or an over pleasant evening? Too much happiness? Alan Moore
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... and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout: 'Save us! '. And I'll look down and whisper: 'No. Alan Moore
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Rome sees some bloke from the London School of Economics on the telly while he’s flicking through the channels. This chap makes the point that governments don’t actually do anything for us. The only thing that makes them boss is that they control all the currency. Historically, anyone proposing an alternative to cash is brutally suppressed, but then historically they haven’t got the Internet, which makes such things much easier to set up; much harder to crack down on. . Alan Moore
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Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade. Alan Moore
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Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured. Twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss. Alan Moore
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When reading you have the opportunity to pause for thought & spark your imagination. It develops intellect. Nothing more threatening to a politician than a well read working class. Alan Moore
97
No matter how powerful our political and religious leaders think they are, they are as dust before the immense and implacable forces of history and progress. I just hope that they don't make too much of a mess or take too many more people down with them. Alan Moore
98
There's a widespread cultural barrenness across art and political culture. But there are some pockets of resistance on the extreme margins, like the techno-savvy protest movements, small press, the creator-owned comics, that seem to be getting some signs of hope for the future. Alan Moore
99
I suppose all fictional characters, especially in adventure or heroic fiction, at the end of the day are our dreams about ourselves. And sometimes they can be really revealing. Alan Moore
100
I'm not a particularly dark individual. I have my moments, it's true, but I do have a sense of humor. Alan Moore