Joss Whedon

“Are you all right?""Oh my god! I phased!""Are you all right?""Are you?""It was strange.""I can't believe I phased just then! That's never...it was totally your fault.""I like to think so, yes.""Tee hee.”

“I'm sorry. But it's like you said, Emma...I don't have any claws.”

“All right, Emma. You brought me in. You made your move. Just like I knew you would. A nice move. Now it's my turn.”

“There's so much you thought you could never face. The decision not to try to control your power, to let it be your demon. Too shameful to remember, so you let it eat your life up instead. But you're past it now, Scott. And all you had to defeat, all you had to let go of...was you. You're free, my love. You're free.”

“I'm totally cool. I'm totally calm, and I'm totally cool. My calm is exceeded only by my cool. Which is total. Here we go.”

“Whedon: Studios will tell you: A woman cannot headline an action movie. After The Hunger Games they might stop telling you that a little bit. Whatever you think of the movie, it’s done a great service. And after The Avengers, I think it’s changing.Johansson: A lot of the female superhero movies just suck really badly.Whedon: The suck factor is not small.Johansson: They are really not well made, and already you’re fighting against the tide. There are a couple [female-driven action movies] that have worked-ish, don’t you think?Hemsworth: Angelina Jolie tends to do it pretty well, as the dominant female.Jackson: They got to get The Pro to the screen!Whedon: [Groaning] See, that is the problem. Sam is the problem!Jackson: I love that book!Whedon: [Reluctantly] The Pro is hilarious.Jackson: The Pro’s hilarious. [To the group] You ever see or hear of it?Johansson: No, what’s The Pro?Jackson: It’s [a comic book] about a hooker who gets super powers!Johansson: [Pauses] That is exactly the problem right there.Whedon: That’s why I wasn’t going to bring up The Pro!(From an Entertainment Weekly interview)”

“You are talking crazy-person talk. Put your words in word places please.”

“Next year, Equality Now will celebrate - if that’s the word - will clock its twentieth year. Two decades of fighting the good fight, fighting the cause, and in case I haven’t been the clear, the cause is that one half of the human race is given the same basic equal rights that the other half enjoys.Or, not given. Given back.That is not a milestone, twenty years, that I intend to go unnoticed. I want to make some noise. I want to make a joyful noise, I want to make too much noise. I want the neighbors to complain. I’m tired of being polite about something that matters so much.”

“Misogyny… is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who is confronted with it.”

“There are certain human truths, like death, that nobody gets to escape, and pain, which everybody not only feels but needs. You have to go through it. So for everybody, at some point—very often for teenagers—the world is a terrible place. The world is a giant, awful black hole of evil conspiracy. Sometimes that’s because you have perspective on what the world’s really like, and sometimes it’s because you’ve completely lost perspective and you’re having a terrible day. But no matter what, everybody shares that feeling, and life is kind of about your ways around that, your ways around certain truths.”

“Time is what turns kittens into cats.”

“There was this other apocalypse this one time. And, well, I took off. But this time, I don't... I don't know." "Well, what's different?" "Well, I guess I was kinda new to being around humans before. And now I've seen a lot more, gotten to know people, seen what they're capable of and I guess I just realize how amazingly... screwed up they all are. I mean, really, really screwed up in a monumental fashion." "Oh." "And they have no purpose that unites them, so they just drift around, blundering through life until they die. Which they-they know is coming, yet every single one of them is surprised when it happens to them. They're incapable of thinking about what they want beyond the moment. They kill each other, which is clearly insane, and yet, here's the thing. When it's something that really matters, they fight. I mean, they're lame morons for fighting. But they do. They never... They never quit. And so I guess I will keep fighting, too.”

“Because to me, there is no logic of any kind behind misogyny. Therefore, it’s funny, because it’s so completely random to me. It’s senseless.”

“Everything is so fragile. There's so much conflict, so much pain...you keep waiting for the dust to settle and then you realize this is it; the dust is your life going on. If happy comes along--that weird, unbearable delight that's actual happy--I think you have to grab it while you can. You take what you can get, 'cause it's here, and then...gone.”

“What's plan b?''We all die now.''What's plan c?”

“Dr. Banner, your work is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous, green rage monster.”

“When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it?”

“It was only when I got to college that I realized that the rest of the world didn't run the way my world was run, and that there was a need for feminism. I'd thought it was all solved. There are people like my mom, clearly everyone is equal and it's all fine. Then I get into the world and I hear the things people are saying. Then I get to Hollywood and hear the very casual, almost insidious misogyny that just runs through so much of the fiction. It was just staggering to me.”

“Back in my day, which was about a week and a half ago, we took our lumps and we got back up and we cried like babies and quit and then put on weight.”

“Anything can be good. Even Last Action Hero could’ve been good. There’s an idea somewhere in almost any movie : if you can find something that you love, then you can do it. If you can’t, it doesn’t matter how skilful you are...”

“Everything I do is going to contain the message that men who are going to be comfortable with powerful women are going to be more powerful men”

“When you’re telling a story, you’re trying to connect to people in a particular way … The way in which you guys have inhabited this world, this universe, has made you part of it, part of the story. You are living in Firefly. When I see you guys, I don’t think the show is off the air. I don’t think there’s a show; I think that’s what the world is like. … The story is our lives.”

“You do not want a war.You have known violence, you have suffered loss, but you have seen nothing of war. War is not just the business of death; it is the anti-thesis of life. Hope, tortured and flayed, reason, dismembered, grinning at its limbs in its lap. Decency, raped to death...You will be a murderer and more.”

“That wouldn't be a first, now would it?""Jean.""Jean Grey is dead, Agent.""Yeah, that'll last.”

“A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend”

“The first lesson a watcher learns is to separate truth from illusion. Because in the world of magicks, it's the hardest thing to do.”

“I mean, I knew I wasn't a nice person, but what did I do in my past life to deserve this? I must have hit a bus full of nuns while driving a stolen car on my way to selling drugs to schoolchildren!”

“In the time of gods and monsters, what is the worth of a man?”

“Xander, don't speak Latin in front of the books.”

“It's about women. It's about power and it's about women and you just hate those two words in the same sentence, don't you?”

“Seven years, Dawn. Working with the Slayer. Seeing my friends get more and more powerful... a witch. A demon. Hell, I could fit Oz in my shaving kit, but come a full moon, he had a wolfy mojo not to be messed with. Powerful, all of them. And I'm the guy who fixes the windows. They'll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn't Chosen, to live so near the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes because nobody's watching me. I saw you last night, and I see you working here today. You're not special; you're extraordinary.”

“Konu bu değil ki. Her zaman bir isim vardır. Lincoln. Hitler. Gandhi. İsim, dehşete sebep olabilir, hayrete...Bazen de harika şeylere, isim yapmaya çalışan milyonlarca insan var. Hayal dahi edemeyeceği şeylerle karşılaşan insanlar. En kritik anda, kendi isimlerimiz bile insanların bizi ayırmak için kullandığı seslere dönüşür. Savaşabildim mi? Faydam oldu mu? Kız kardeşlerime destek oldum mu? Yoldaşlarıma, çocuklarıma, sümüklü böcek kabilesine...Her birimizin içinde zincirin bir halkası var. Adamın dediği gibi, ya varlığını hissedersin, ya da bilmezden gelirsin. Hissetmeye çalıştım. Bir kadın gibi karanlıkla yüzleşmeye çalıştım. Bundan fazlasına ihtiyacım yok. Beni hatırlamak zorunda değilsiniz. Kim olduğumu bile bilmiyorsunuz. Ben biliyorum.”

“Love is for children. I owe him a debt.”

“Sketchy: I'm no stranger to stoner logic.”

“At the end of the day I have many answers for it. It has to do with my mom, who was an extraordinary woman, and a great feminist. It has to do with the people in my life. It has to do with a lot of different things, but -- I don't know! Because I'm not just writing from the female characters for other people. I have a desire to see them in our culture -- that was not met for most of my childhood. Except occasionally by James Cameron. [From the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, in response to being asked why he writes strong female characters.]”

“When Roseanne read the first script of mine that got into her hands without being edited by someone else she said, 'How can you write a middle-aged woman this well?' I said, 'If you met my mom you wouldn't ask'.”

“Nowadays I’m really cranky about comics. Because most of them are just really, really poorly written soft-core. And I miss good old storytelling. And you know what else I miss? Super powers. Why is it now that everybody’s like “I can reverse the polarity of your ions!” Like in one big flash everybody’s Doctor Strange. I like the guys that can stick to walls and change into sand and stuff. I don’t understand anything anymore. And all the girls are wearing nothing, and they all look like they have implants. Well, I sound like a very old man, and a cranky one, but it’s true.”

“What about me? I love you so much. And I tried to make you go away. I killed you and it didn't help. And I hate it! I hate that it's so hard and that you can hurt me so much. I know everything that you did, because you did it to me. Oh, God! I wish that I wished you dead. I don't. I can't. Strong is fighting! It's hard, and it's painful, and it's every day. It's what we have to do. And we can do it together. But if you're too much of a coward for that, then burn. If I can't convince you that you belong in this world, then I don't know what can. But do not expect me to watch. And don't expect me to mourn for you, because...”

“The thing about changing the world... Once you do it, the world's all different.”

“I’m assuming you’re as mystified by this as the rest of us, Rasputin. No. I’m not. I have been planning to destroy the Breakworld since I was a child.[silence]This is why I don’t make so many jokes. I never know when is good.”

“I loved the idea of a girl going into a dark alley, and a monster comes, and then she just aces him. It’s like, you want to see the tiny person suddenly take control. God, my whole career is basically about that!”

“As we all know, blinking lights means science.”

“I'm not big on regret. It's not on my schedule.”

“Okay. So...serious wedgie...”

“That all you got...Bub?”

“It is good to know, no matter how long I am gone...you do not grow up too much.”

“I've Got Him! You've got to keep at her. Forget all your training--she's fought you a thousand times.""Don't presume to run my team, you little tart-"(Colossus throws Emma at Danger)"Yes. I see how it works. Normally, I wouldn't have done that.”

“I really like beer.”

“I also felt that Ron and Hermione would have gotten divorced. I'm sorry, I just do. The end of Harry Potter did feel ultimately to me...just the fact everybody had married everybody. The books were so real and so grounded in what things are really like when you're that age, she nailed that so beautifully. And then there was this slightly fantastical ending. I know that was there for her to say, 'Really, I mean it, no more books,' but you do sort of go, people who were in a war are different from people who haven't been, and how does it affect them? But am I going to second-guess my favorite writer? I think not.”

“If every vampire who said he was at The Crucifixion, was actually there, it would have been like Woodstock . . .”