Brian Azzarello

“Why do something that's already been done?”

“From a storytelling perspective, perfection is death.”

“'100 Bullets' is such a post-modern noir; there are certain rules you gotta follow.”

“Man, I think mistakes - that's what makes us distinct human beings. Those imperfections.”

“It is our mistakes that make us interesting, right?”

“To ground a character in reality, you have to use shades of gray.”

“Painted talking heads is just boring.”

“I didn't really like superheroes. I liked monsters and war comics.”

“I'm always interested in using comics in different ways.”

“I have to challenge myself, and I have to challenge the reader. We should be weaving and working on new stories and not the same story over and over.”

“I think a lot of superheroes seem to have the same value system; they just have a different costume. They're all doing exactly the same thing.”

“If you read any sort of, like, military general autobiographies or biographies, most of them never wanted to fight, you know? It's necessary. War is necessary.”

“I like alleys. They are the backdoor to everything.”

“One of the reasons Batman works as a character is that it's not beyond possibility that he could exist - you could become Batman if you had a billion dollars at your disposal. There's nothing paranormal or superhuman or supernatural about that character. And I think his villains work the same way. You could be one of his villains just as easily.”

“I have a reputation for writing all kinds of hard-core, violent things.”

“The metro section of the newspaper every day is full of stuff I can use. It's the greatest inspiration for me because it's full of endings. That's where the ends of stories show up.”

“Hollywood, they love everything, but they move like molasses. They'll option anything - the worst idea in the world will get optioned just because they want to keep the other person from getting that idea.”

“I think portraying the Joker's point of view would do a disservice to that character. As soon as you get inside his head he would lose so much power.”

“I'm usually done working by Happy Hour.”

“It's depicted in comics as, like, this gung-ho, 'Let's die in battle, in glory' idea, because that's just the genre we're in. But that's not what war really is.”