Frank Miller Quotations

I realized that I was about to turn 30, and Batman was permanently 29. And I was going to be damned if I was older than Batman.

The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He's dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he's a hero the whole time.

Think of me as the weathered sheriff coming back into Dodge 'cause the youngsters are shooting up the church and scaring the horses and not doing right by the women.

I'm a spoilt brat. I thought I was just going to walk in and make movies. But I'd been my own boss for so long that all of a sudden to be facing a roomful of people who were niggling over every little scene... I just thought I'd go back and draw my comics and have a happy life.

Sometimes the solitary voice can be the best one.

You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people.

When you have a brush in your hand, inking a beautiful woman is a lot like running your hands over her.

I grew up on the crime stuff. Spillane, Chandler, Jim Thompson, and noir movies like Fuller, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang. When I first showed up in New York to write comics back in the late 1970s, I came with a bunch of crime stories but everybody just wanted men in tights.

'Occupy' is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.

I don't own an ounce of the work I've ever done on 'Batman,' and I still work on 'Batman.' I love the character, I think it's a lot of fun, and it's kind of fun to be in that ballpark every once in a while, where you're seeing a different crowd.

I'm a comic book artist. So I think to myself, what do I like to draw? I like to draw hot chicks, fast cars and cool guys in trench coats. So that's what I write about.

Cartoonists' dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw.

You do Batman right, and he's going to be popular. He's a great character. I was once asked by somebody if writing 'Batman' was like holding a Ming vase or something. And I said, 'No, it's like holding a big-ass diamond that you can't break. You can throw him against the ceiling, against the floor, anywhere, and you just can't break Batman.'

My feeling is that the hero has now been defined by phrases like the odious one that we were all raised with - crimes does not pay. Of course it pays, you schmuck. That's not why we don't do it. We don't do it because it is wrong.

What's happened with computer technology is perfectly timed for someone with my set of skills. I tell stories with pictures. What I love about CGI is that if I can think it, it can be put on the screen.

I don't do a comic book thinking there is a movie. I just want it to be as good a comic book as it can be.

Mighty cultures never - are almost never conquered. They crumble from within. And frankly, I think that a lot of Americans are acting like spoiled brats because everything isn't working out perfectly every time.

I think most things I read on the Internet and in newspapers are propaganda. Everyone from the 'New York Times' to Rupert Murdoch has a point of view and is putting forth their own propaganda. They're stuck with the facts as they are, but the way they interpret and frame them is wildly different.

I thought Daredevil was kind of cool because he couldn't do anything. I mean, he's blind. It wasn't that he could fly. His major power was an impediment. So I was intrigued. When I took over he was kind of like Spider-Man-lite, but I was able to project a lot of my Catholic imagery onto it. And I'd always wanted to do a crime comic.

It was said Daredevil grew up in Hell's Kitchen, an amazing name for a neighbourhood. But that opened a Pandora's box of all the crime stuff I wanted to do. I borrowed liberally from Will Eisner's 'The Spirit' and turned 'Daredevil' into a crime comic.

In a way, 'Sin City's designed to be paced somewhere between an American comic book and Japanese manga. Working in black and white, I realized that the eye is less patient, and you have to make your point, and sometimes repeat it. Slowing things down is harder in black and white, because there isn't as much for the eye to enjoy.

But I'm not trying to convince anybody how to vote or how to live. Nobody's ever successfully accused me of being realistic.

In the comic-book world, there tends to be an overblown sense of tradition. Bad habits die hard. There are ways I think the form could work more effectively if we lost the bad habits that were created before we were born.

The larger-than-life thing is definitely what I'm after. I've always drawn dark stories. Occasionally, I'll try a perfect hero, but it's a real stretch for me. I like 'em warts and all, and obsessive and weird.

We're constantly told that all cultures are equal, and that every belief system is as good as the next. And it led to a kind of - and generally, that America was to be known for its flaws rather than its virtues.

When you think of what Americans accomplished, building these amazing cities and all the good it's done in the world, it's kind of disheartening to hear so much hatred of America, not just from abroad, but internally.

As a cartoonist, I'm a caricaturist. First you find out what somebody really looks like, and then you find out what they 'really' look like.

It is more raw and unfettered and I'm more likely going into something you could call extreme cartooning. There's a lot of that in the course of 'Holy Terror.' There are interludes where there are pictures - cartoon pictures - of modern figures and they are all wordless. It's up to readers to put the words in.

The Spartans were a paradoxical people. They were the biggest slave owners in Greece. But at the same time, Spartan women had an unusual level of rights. It's a paradox that they were a bunch of people who in many ways were fascist, but they were the bulwark against the fall of democracy.

Comic-book pages are vertical, and movie screens are relentlessly horizontal. But it's all the same form. We use different tools, but we get the job done. I'm completely in love with CGI. It's great for conveying a cartoonist's sense of reality.

The comics I read as a kid were all about guys in tights. But here was a guy who wore a fedora. He fought crime like they did in Marvel and DC, but he did it in the real world. I had just turned 12 when I met the Spirit and it was a strange coincidence. At the same time I discovered girls I fell out of love with guys in tights.

Hollywood is a town; it's not a medium. And cinema is a medium you can practice anywhere.

'Comic book' has come to mean a specific genre, not a story form, in people's minds. So someone will call 'Die Hard' a 'comic-book movie,' when it has nothing to do with comic books. I'd rather have comics be the vehicle by which stories are told.

Comics are so full of amazing work. And I can't look at a drawing of a woman without thinking of, for instance, Wallace Wood and his amazing way of capturing beauty.

I will throw all my best efforts into it, my thoughts and political observations, but ultimately I want to create a narrative that keeps you turning the pages and leaves you with a sense that this thing has a reason for being there.

What I want to bring back to superheroes with this project is a sense of play. Things have gotten so dreary. The heroes have gotten so ugly that even their muscles have muscles.

Where I would fault President Bush the most was that, in the wake of 9/11, he motivated our military, but he didn't call the nation into a state of war. And he didn't explain that this would take though a communal effort against common foe.

I have been there at night working and people have come by wanting to help. As far as anybody being out of line down there, I haven't seen it.

It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a piece of propaganda.

Or at least the ends justify being really mean!

Those of us who wanted to test the boundaries of what a superhero comic book could do, unfortunately broke those boundaries and the results have not all been very good. We pushed against the old walls, and they fell-but nothing much has been built to replace them. And now the roof is leaking and the sewer's backing up.

We don't have the massive clout that Hollywood does,

The operational word is relax. Allow your body or your mind to settle down.

We are very happy that they reached an agreement. Obviously, we were concerned about the outcome of the negotiations.

Emotionally, it's really raw. Imagine the powerful rage when someone crosses the passion between a man and a woman or a man and his city.

Five would take care of all the graphic novels ? but there's new material that I'm writing for the second one.

The world, she do spin mad. These are wild times.

I've always wanted to do crime stories. That's my favorite thing to read, ... I grew up reading Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. I always thought they would make excellent comic books.

There's a lot of controversy about whether we should put so much emphasis on a single set of tests. Are we allowing teachers to practice the art of education or are we teaching to the test?

It spans generations. We have parents and children who play, high school students. It's a good, wholesome atmosphere.

In Russian literature, Moscow is a calm city - but St. Petersburg is the place where all the bad things happen.

I prefer to write and draw in the privacy of my home and with total freedom and then take it to the lion's den.

I find that if somebody is writing and drawing a comic book, planning it to be a movie and a game at the same time tends to lead to a pretty lame job.

When I'm writing a comic book, I'm thinking about a character that I'm going to be drawing on the page. I've never drawn a character to look like who I want to cast in a movie because I don't think that way. I'm a real monomaniac. I do one thing at a time.

It's one thing to be sitting at a drawing board, alone in your home and coming up with a fantasy character, and drawing her whichever way you feel like drawing, then dealing with a real performer. All of a sudden, things change. It's amazing, in working with actors, how much I learn from them and how many new lines will come to mind because of their personality or their strengths.

Working with the kind of talent that I've gotten to work with, like the cast of Sin City, it makes me think probably more fully dimensionally about what is going on behind their eyes. But I draw the way I draw, and ain't nothing gonna change that. Although, I draw Marv and I think, "Boy, I could throw a little Mickey [Rourke] in there."

I'm not going to complain about the fact that people are paying attention to my work. I suppose that wouldn't be fair.

I guess in my own egotistical way I like to create my own library of Batman books that doesn't run contrary to a single thing that has been published before, but it also stands on its own.

Comic book' has come to mean a specific genre, not a story form, in people's minds. So someone will call 'Die Hard' a 'comic-book movie,' when it has nothing to do with comic books. I'd rather have comics be the vehicle by which stories are told.

The world doesn't make sense until you force it to.

Alfred: Hmf. I suppose you'll take up flying next, like that fellow in Metropolis.

I'll make it. I won't die. I've got too much I have to do to let myself die.

My Sin City heroes are knights in dirty, blood-caked armor. They bring justice to a world that gives them no medals, no praise, no reward. That world, that city, often kills them for their brave service.

I can tell you squat about Islamism. But I know a lot about Al Quaeda, and they need to burn in hell.

A gun is a liar's weapon

An old man dies, a little girl lives. Fair trade.

Nancy's got a guardian angel. Seven feet plus of muscle and mayhem that goes by the name of Marv.

You can never escape me. Bullets don't harm me. Nothing harms me. But I know pain. I KNOW pain. Sometimes I share it. With someone like you.

Hell’s waking up every goddamn day and not even knowing why you’re here.

Ladies. Gentlemen. You have eaten well. You've eaten Gotham's wealth. Its spirit. Your feast is nearly over. From this moment on...none of you are safe.

Hello, I'm Shellie's new boyfriend and I'm out of my mind. If you so much as talk to her or even think her name, I'll cut you in ways that'll make you useless to a woman.

Deadly little Miho. She won't let you feel a thing unless she wants you to. She twists the blade. He feels it.

You don't... get it, boy... This isn't a mudhole... it's an operating table. And I'm the surgeon.

I check the list. Rubber tubing, gas, saw, gloves, cuffs, razor wire, hatchet, Gladys, and my mitts.

I always knew it would come down to you and the big blue school boy. Planet's too big for the BOTH of you. When it all comes down, I want a piece of him. A small piece, will do? For OLD TIMES, sake, you know..it still hurts when its cold.

This should be agony. I should be a mass of aching muscle - broken, spent, unable to move. And, were I an older man, I surely would ... ... but I'm a man of thirty - of twenty again. The rain on my chest is a baptism - I'm born again ...

And I was going to be damned if I was older than Batman.

The day you write to please everyone you no longer are in journalism. You are in show business.

We live in the shadow of crime with the unspoken understanding that we are victims.. of fear, of violence, of social impotence. A man has risen to show us that the power is, ans always has been, in our hands. We are under siege. He's showing us that we can resist.

The rain on my chest is a baptism - I'm born again.

The American conscience died with the Kennedys.

Of course we're Criminals

I take his weapons away from him. Both of them.

Gotham City. Clean shafts of concrete and snowy rooftops. The work of men who died generations ago. From here, it looks like an achievement. From here, you can't see the enemy.

The most questionable thing I did was make Superman a government agent. If this had been a Superman story, I'd never have done that - and I know that, because I have a Superman story I want to tell someday. In this story, Batman was the hero, so the world was built around him.

She doesn't quite chop his head off. She makes a Pez dispenser out of him.

In the world of comic books, "troublemaker" means someone who has some sense of dignity.

A screenwriter is much like being a fire hydrant with a bunch of dogs lined up around it.

The Dark Knight series is all from Batman’s point of view. But if you look at Dark Knight 2, you’ll see a Superman who’s much calmer than the one in the first Dark Knight. Batman and Superman are dead opposites. I love Superman. Do I love Batman more? They’re not people. They’re only lines on paper.

Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That's one of the things they're there for.

In a way, 'Sin City''s designed to be paced somewhere between an American comic book and Japanese manga. Working in black and white, I realized that the eye is less patient, and you have to make your point, and sometimes repeat it. Slowing things down is harder in black and white, because there isn't as much for the eye to enjoy.

I moved to New York and was told, "Go back home. We don't need you. Go pump gas. You're from Vermont. We've got no use for you. You're not drawing guys in tights." So, I learned how to draw guys in tights, and I put them in as many crime situations as I could.

The fundament of a superhero is the guy in tights saving innocent people from bad things. It's amazing how infrequently that seems to happen in superhero comics these days.

I was always into noir. When I lived in Vermont I was drawing stuff that looked like an amateur doing Sin City. When I first got to New York I was swiftly informed that they only did guys in tights.

'Cartoonists' dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw.

People are attempting to bring a superficial reality to superheroes which is rather stupid. They work best as the flamboyant fantasies they are. I mean, these are characters that are broad and big. I don't need to see sweat patches under Superman's arms. I want to see him fly.

3,000 of my neighbors were murdered. My country was, utterly unprovoked, savagely attacked. I wish all those responsible for the atrocity of 9/11 to burn in Hell.

A man without hope is a man without fear.

When you got a condition, it's bad to forget your medicine.

It's not movies and it's not "fine art." The beauty of a comic is that it's clear, direct communication. My work is getting simpler and more cartoony because I'm much more interested in communication now than in any illustrative value.