Joss Whedon People Quotations

I don't tend to write straight dramas where real life just impinges. But because I don't, when I do, it is very interesting to slap people in the face with just an absolute of life.

I love fantasy. I love horror. I love musicals. Whatever doesn't really happen in life is what I'm interested in. As a way of commenting on everything that does happen in life, because ultimately the only thing I'm really interested in is people.

Horror movies don't exist unless you go and see them, and people always will.

The people who feel the most strongly about something will turn on you the most vociferously if they feel you've let them down.

The fact is some people really love my work, some people not so much, but at the end of the day, I don't want anybody coming out of the movie thinking about me.

My first gig ever was writing looplines for a movie that had already been made. You know, writing lines over somebody's back to explain something, to help make a connection, to add a joke, or to just add babble because the people are in frame and should be saying something.

People would say, 'You're going to need this and that,' and I'd be like, 'Not so much.' If I only needed three walls, we only built three, and if someone asked, 'Well, what if you want to do this other shot?' I said, 'Well, we just won't.'

I don't have a ton of enemies. I get along with people pretty well when I'm not annoying them to death.

I always want to make sure I'm telling a story about people that I care about.

I respect television in a way that some people who came out of film might not.

I was never a games night guy, but at some point, social interaction starts to freak me out. So when there's a point, it's easier for me to see the people I love and hang out and try to have fun.

I would like to have as much going on as other people do, but my problem is I get so attached to things, and there's my kids, and I need my sleep, and then there's being married - gotta check in on that, too.

Especially, I think, living in any fantasy or science fiction world means really understanding what you're seeing and reading really densely on a level that a lot of people don't bother to read.

I've often said there's no such thing as a track record in TV. I seen people who created things much more successful than mine treated like dirt.

A lot of people who saw 'The Avengers' didn't read comic books, don't like comic book movies, and enjoyed it. That was huge for me.

The more you can create a structure by which people live in a fantastical situation and by which they will act, and the more you lay that out for the audience, the more they will feel at home in it.

It's a question of opening it up, and it's a question of closing it down, ... You know, opening it up in the sense of: We need a giant, epic story that is not the kind of thing these people usually get involved in in a TV series, which is more mundane. You need a reason for this to be a movie. The closing comes in making sure that it is accessible to everybody: that you explain everybody as much as you need to, that you explain the world as much as you need to, that you begin and you end, that you have an arc for the character, as well as a plot that has a question and then an answer.

I've had so much success. I had something to say, I got to say it, people heard it, and they agreed. That's every artist's dream. That's the brass ring.

The Internet community started forming right when 'Buffy' started airing, and the notion of a show creator being anything other than a name people recognize on the screen was completely new.

I like my chances. But it is absolutely still too amorphous for me to make any kind of announcement about it. I'm out there trying, and there's other people trying, to put it together. But until something falls in place, I really can't say.

I had this extraordinary world I helped create, with this cast I felt were the most extraordinary people I'd worked with, who were born to play these parts,

The idea behind the show, ... was to take nine people and say, 'Nine people look out into the blackness of space, and see nine different things.' But science fiction opens you up to every element of history that you want, because the future is just the past in a blender. So I could take anything from the human experience I've read about or felt or seen. Like, what is it like after a war? It doesn't matter which war or which country - what is it like for the people who lost?

The networks have a particular agenda, a particular model and structure. It doesn't have anything to do with content. This is not a dis on them - they are a business model, run by business people.

There are many films and TV shows I make where people find themselves in fantastical situations; as often as possible, their reactions to it are very normal.

What 'Scream' was great at was presenting ironic detachment and then making you actually care about the people that were having it, and juxtaposing it with their situation, all in the service of making a great horror movie. It was fresh.

That title, is one of the things I fought for. A lot of people said 'But it's stupid, and it's the title of a comedy movie, and people won't take it seriously,' and I'm sure there are some people who still don't. But for the most part, people do see that we really have a quality show.

The times are chaotic. For me, I would hope that people look at [Angel] and gain strength by it. With everything that I do, I hope that they see people struggling to live decent, moral lives in a completely chaotic world. They see how hard it is, how often they fail, and how they get up and keep trying. That, to me, is the most important message I'm ever going to tell.

I cannot abide useless people.

You go to movies to see people you love suffer - that's why you go to the movies. You don't go to see a movie about a guy who already knows he has a wonderful life.

I hate it when people talk about Buffy as being campy... I hate camp, I don't enjoy dumb TV. I believe Aaron Spelling has single-handedly lowered SAT scores.

Making 'The Avengers' was very important to me, but it was also extremely arduous. I missed my friends and I missed my home, so I decided to throw them all on camera, which is the only way I seem to know to relate to people.

I'm never interested in movies where you don't care about the people you're watching, and that's my biggest quibble about horror, that kids have gotten stupider and stupider.

People always say I write a lot of pop culture references. Can somebody please count the pop culture references in 'Firefly?' Because I don't know how to put this to you, but there was one. I referenced The Beatles in the pilot.

I don't want to create responsible shows with lawyers in them. I want to invade people's dreams.

People used to laugh that academics would study Disney movies. There's nothing more important for academics to study, because they shape the minds of our children possibly more than any single thing.

You can't just throw people at all your problems, dear.

Sometimes people are layered like that. There's something totally different underneath than what's on the surface. But sometimes, there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie.

We'll never make Firefly again, because that was a thing that existed and is now gone. And Serenity isn't Firefly, and whatever comes next won't be, either. But I would love to tell more stories of this universe and to hang out with these people on and off for the rest of my career.

Most people don't see Hamlet as an old bald guy.

My life has included a study of Shakespeare and to me it's very natural, but I know that it's not always accessible to other people.

"'Come on, guys, I'm the leader of a whole movie...!' I tell when I want people to fear and respect me. Not wildly effective."

I designed 'Buffy' to be an icon, to be an emotional experience, to be loved in a way that other shows can't be loved. Because it's about adolescence, which is the most important thing people go through in their development, becoming an adult.

You either believe women are people or you don't. It's that simple.

People with real power never fear of losing it. People with control think of little else.

Writers are completely out of touch with reality. Writers are crazy [people]. We create conflict - for a living. We do this all the time, sometimes on a weekly basis, we create horrible, incredible circumstances and then figure a way out of them. That's what we do.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn.

I wish more people would take the extraordinary talent they have and just let their id go because that's what we discovered. We discovered that the sillier we got, the more people believed that we were speaking from our hearts.

Don’t give people what they want, give them what they need.

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.

I'd rather make a show 100 people need to see, than a show that 1000 people want to see.

If I find out I have to write today and nothing else, that’s a perfect day. I know a lot of people who are great at it and make it look easy who are tortured and miserable people. Writing for me is perfect peace.

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy.