Brian K. Vaughan

“Not many people read my stuff, but I really like the ones that do.”

“By the time you have your protagonist attempting to assassinate the Pope, you've sort of signaled that everything is on the table.”

“Everything good in New York used to be something awful, I guess.""And everything awful used to be something good.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The world is a terrifying place, more than I ever realized. But if I had my whole life to do over again, that's literally the only thing I'd change. I'd stop being so afraid of other people.”

“Fans of my books have just been supremely nice.”

“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.”

“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.”

“That was the appealing thing about comics: There literally is no budget in comics. You're only limited by your imagination.”

“The advice to "kill your darlings" has been attributed to various authors across the various galaxies... and Mister Heist hated them all.Why teach young writers to edit out whatever it is they feel most passionate about?Better to kill everything in their writing they DON'T love as much.Until only the darlings remain.”

“You know that old cliché about how millions of deaths being a statistic, while the loss of just one life is a tragedy? If that's true, what is it when you lose something that never even had a chance to be born? I've had a lot of relationships in my time, platonic or otherwise, but the ones I think about most are those that never quite made it to term. The dashing first date who didn't call you back. The lady on the train you had that amazing conversation with but never saw again. The cool neighbor kid you met the first time a week before he moved away. I guess I'm just haunted by all that potential energy. One moment, the universe presents you with this amazing opportunity for new possibilities and then...”

“All writing is the same: It's just making up lies until it starts to sound like the truth. That's what I do.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I grew up with a sister I was very close with and a mom who was a powerful influence on my life. I was always close with women.”

“Most of us think we can hide our weaknesses from the world, and sometimes, we're right. But only if we're very very strong.”

“The biggest inspiration for everything I do is, of course, my wife, playwright Ruth McKee.”

“I was pretty good at picking up new languages when I was little, but it's not like I had superpowers or anything.Kids just have an easier time with words.”

“I never like to talk about my own politics, but whether you're left, right or center, the 2008 race was definitely good drama.”