STAN LEE QUOTES

American comic book writer & creator (1922- )

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There is only one who is all powerful, and his greatest weapon is love.

STAN LEE

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I'm a frustrated actor. My ... goal is to beat Alfred Hitchcock in the number of cameos. I'm going to try to break his record.

STAN LEE

Tags: acting

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I'm sort of a pressure writer. If somebody says, "Stan, write something," and I have to have it by tomorrow morning, I'll just sit down and I'll write it. It always seems to come to me. But I'm better doing a rushed job because if it isn't something that's due quickly, I won't work on it until it becomes almost an emergency and then I'll do it.

STAN LEE

Tags: writing

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I'm no prophet, but I'm guessing that comic books will always be strong. I don't think anything can really beat the pure fun and pleasure of holding a magazine in your hand, reading the story on paper, being able to roll it up and put it in your pocket, reread again later, show it to a friend, carry it with you, toss it on a shelf, collect them, have a lot of magazines lined up and read them again as a series. I think young people have always loved that. I think they always will.

STAN LEE

Tags: comic books

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What did Doctor Doom really want? He wanted to rule the world. Now, think about this. You could walk across the street against a traffic light and get a summons for jaywalking, but you could walk up to a police officer and say "I want to rule the world," and there's nothing he can do about it, that is not a crime. Anybody can want to rule the world. So, even though he was the Fantastic Four's greatest menace, in my mind, he was never a criminal!

STAN LEE

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Once, I'd written a Western story, and one of the panels was just a hand holding a six-shooter, and there was a puff of smoke coming out of the barrel, and a straight horizontal line, indicating the trajectory of the bullet. So that page was sent back to me from the Code office, saying that the particular panel was too violent. I asked them what they meant, and they told me--I swear--"The puff of smoke is too big." Well, of course. So I had the artist make the smoke a little smaller, and the youth of America was saved.

STAN LEE

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I used to be embarrassed because I was just a comic-book writer while other people were building bridges or going on to medical careers. And then I began to realize: entertainment is one of the most important things in people's lives. Without it they might go off the deep end. I feel that if you're able to entertain people, you're doing a good thing.

STAN LEE

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It never occurred to us to save any of those things. We never thought they'd have any value later on. We worked in a very small office, and the printer would send back all the original pages of artwork, but we had no place to put them. So when we ordered food, we told the delivery guy, "Hey, would you mind taking these pages and dropping them in the trash on the way out?"

STAN LEE

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I had a publisher who felt comics were just for little kiddies, so he never wanted me to use words of more than two syllables.

STAN LEE

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I think the most important thing is to be busy, because if you have work occupying you, you don't have time to worry about the other serious problems in life.

STAN LEE

Tags: work

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For the first week, I stood in front of that little thing on the sidewalk and wanted to punch anybody that stepped on it.

STAN LEE

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Jack Kirby to me was far and away the king. I gave him the name King Kirby ... everything he drew was just the way it should be.

STAN LEE

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Someone wants to do a movie of my life now and he's writing a script, and I said to him, "What the hell could you do? I've never been arrested, I haven't taken drugs, I've had the same wife for 54 years -- where's anything of interest to people?"

STAN LEE

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I don't really see a need to retire as long as I am having fun.

STAN LEE

Tags: retirement

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It's a tremendous challenge, because there have been so many characters created over the years. Every time you think you come up with a great name, you find out somebody has already done it. Dreaming up the stories isn't that hard, but coming up with a good title is the toughest part.

STAN LEE

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I'm proud of everything that was done that was successful. I did the hiring and the firing and I'm proud of the fact that we were able to hire people as talented as the artists that we had, like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and Gene Colan and John Romita and Gil Kane. I'm proud of the fact that I worked with them and I like to think that we brought out the best of these artists and writers. It was a great time. I look back at that time when Marvel was starting I think I couldn't have been with a better group of people.

STAN LEE

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When you can sit down with a plain sheet of paper in front of you and make some notes, and, little by little, you see it take shape and become a concept for a movie or a TV show. That's a real thrill. You watch it go from notes on a paper to a meeting with writers and directors and actors. I can't think of anything that's more exciting.

STAN LEE

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If Shakespeare and Michelangelo were alive today, and if they decided to collaborate on a comic, Shakespeare would write the script and Michelangelo would draw it. How could anybody say that this wouldn't be as worthwhile an artform as anything on earth?

STAN LEE

Tags: comic books

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Well, I guess we were looking for something to hook some new readers. Also, I think boredom had a little to do with it. We had been turning out books for about twenty years. Same old type all the time ... so I figured, let's try something a little more offbeat. Let's try to ... I think the big policy was to avoid the clichés. For example in the Fantastic Four, the first cliché was: all superheroes wore costumes. We soon learned that was a mistake because, much as the readers like offbeat things, there are certain basics that we must have, and apparently superhero fans do demand costumes as we learned in the subsequent mail.

STAN LEE

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The only time I go on the set is when I have a cameo to do in the picture. I go to the set and I do my little cameo and I meet all the people. It's a great way to spend the day. And then I go back to my own world.

STAN LEE

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