Alan Moore

“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.”

“Most people find the word Apocalypse, to be a terrifying concept. Checked in the dictionary, it means only revelation, although it obviously has also come to mean end of the world. As to what the end of the world means, I would say that probably depends on what we mean by world. I don’t think this means the planet, or even the life forms upon the planet. I think the world is purely a construction of ideas, and not just the physical structures, but the mental structures, the ideologies that we’ve erected, that is what I would call the world. Our political structures, philosophical structures, ideological frameworks, economies. These are actually imaginary things, and yet that is the framework that we have built our entire world upon. It strikes me that a strong enough wave of information could completely overturn and destroy all of that. A sudden realization that would change our entire perspective upon who we are and how we exist.”

“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.”

“Please! Don't all leave. Somebody has to do it, don't you see? Somebody has to save the world...”

“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.”

“This is an IMAGINARY STORY...aren't they all?”

“Such a small thing to cast such a long & uneasy shadow over the future. For whatever the future holds, one thing is certain: it just won't be the same.”

“There is no coincidence. Only the illusion of coincidence.”

“Isn't it strange how life turns into melodrama?”

“The trap of reputation, for example. In this scenario, having garnered a considerable reputation or level of acclaim, one becomes paralyzed by the dreadful thought of losing it all by doing something... undignified. Uncool. This is a trap. Reputation is a trap that will turn you into a lifeless marble bust of yourself before you're even dead. And then of courses there is reputation's immortal big brother, Posterity, worrying about which has driven better women and men than you into the asylum. All these things... reputation, posterity, cool... should be tested to destruction by a course of deliberate sabotage. As the often-illuminating Escape and New Musical Express cartoonist Shaky Kane once remarked, "Don't be cool. Like everything." If you find yourself in danger of being taken seriously, then try to do something which undermines or sabotages that perception in some way. If your talent is of any genuine worth, it should be able to weather squalls of unpopularity and audience incomprehensio. The only thing that might seriously endanger either your talent or your relationship with your talent is if you suddenly found yourself fashionable.”

“Who? Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask.”

“They say that life's a game, & then they take the board away.”

“The world's a stage, & everything else is Vaudeville.”

“Things are tough all over, cupcake, an' it rains on the just an' the unjust alike...except in California.”

“A world grows up around me. Am I shaping it, or do its predetermined contours guide my hand?”

“I'm the king of the 20th century. I'm the boogeyman, the villian, the black sheep of the family.”

“Everybody has their story to tell.”

“But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you.”

“Love your rage, not your cage.”

“I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell.”

“Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.”

“... the 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 favour.”

“War is a perversion of sex.”

“You see, there's the way things seemed and then there's the way things were and one is so often the total reverse of the other.”

“IF YOU HURT INSIDE, GET CERTIFIED, AND IF LIFE SHOULD TREAT YOU BAD...DON'T GET EE-EE-EVEN, GET MAD!”

“MEMORY'S SO TREACHEROUS. ONE MOMENT YOU'RE LOST IN A CARNIVAL OF DELIGHTS, WITH POIGNANT CHILDHOOD AROMAS , THE FLASHING NEON OF PUBERTY, ALL THAT SENTIMENTAL CANDY-FLOSS ...THE NEXT , IT LEADS YOU SOMEWHERE YOU DON'T WANT TO GO......SOMEWHERE DARK AND COLD, FILLED WITH THE DAMP, AMBIGUOUS SHAPES OF THINKS YOU'D HOPED WERE FORGOTTEN. MEMORIES CAN BE VILE, REPULSIVE LITTLE BRUTES. LIKE CHILDREN, I SUPPOSE. HAHA. BUT CAN WE LIVE WITHOUT THEM? MEMORIES ARE WHAT OUR REASON IS BASED UPON. IF WE CAN'T FACE THEM, WE DENY REASON ITSELF!ALGHOUGH, WHY NOT? WE AREN'T CONTRACTUALLY TIED DOWN TO RATIONALITY! THERE IS NO SANITY CLAUSE! 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... YOU CAN JUST STEP OUTSIDE, AND CLOSE THE DOOR ON ALL THOSE DREADFUL THINGS THAT HAPPENED. YOU CAN LOCK THEM AWAY... FOREVER.”

“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 MISTAKES!I GIVE YOU... THE AVERAGE MAN! PHYSICALLY UNREMARKABLE , IT HAS INSTEAD A DEFORMED SET OF VALUES. NOTICE THE HIDEOUSLY BLOATED SENSE OF HUMANITY'S IMPORTANCE. THE CLUB-FOOTED SOCIAL CONSCIENCE AND THE WITHERED OPTIMISM. IT'S CERTAINLY NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH IS IT?MOST REPULSIVE OF ALL , ARE ITS FRAIL AND USELESS NOTIONS OF ORDER AND SANITY. IF TOO MUCH WEIGHT IS PLACED UPON THEM...... THEY SNAP. HOW DOES IT LIVE , I HEAR YOU ASK?HOW DOES THIS POOR, PATHETIC SPECIMEN SURVIVE IN TODAY'S HARSH AND IRRATIONAL WORLD?THE SAD ANSWER IS 'NOT VERY WELL. ”

“Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell.”

“Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. ”

“The dusk reeks of fornication and bad consciences.”

“I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one. An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. we must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.”

“You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.”

“I thought, "Well if I'm gonna react might as well overreact!”

“The past can't hurt you anymore, not unless you let it.”

“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.”

“It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses, and apologized to no one.”

“Rorshach's journal. October 16, 1985. Been waiting in Moloch's fridge for three hours. Ate two raw eggs and packet of honey mustard sauce. Just realized I am sitting on baking soda. Freezing ass off. Really have to take leak.”

“There's a notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridiculous. There is no ordinary person.”

“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-imagined past.”

“Nothing's that simple, not even things that are simply awful.”

“It's early days. A few skeletons are bound to keep jumping out of the closet.”

“I still can't believe it . . . him comin' here everyday, nobody realizin'. Still, that's life: lotta stuff happens under the waterline.”

“I sat on the bed. I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to make it look like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that isn't the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness.”

“Why do we argue? Life's so fragile, a successful virus clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.”

“We are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later.”

“As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding.”

“As I see it, part of the art of being a hero is knowing when you don't need to be one anymore.”

“Quatermain (while climbing down): We are above an abyss such as satan's own, Miss Murray.Pray not to look down.Mina: And you, Sir, should not look up.You have me at a disadvantage and I trust you'll not misuse our situation.”

“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.”

“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.”