Mark Waid Quotes

Some of the writers definitely got inspired by some of the story lines, but we are evolving in the 'Daredevil' story. So when it comes to 'Elektra', they didn't follow one of her specific story lines, you know. They really tried to capture what comes through the comics, but there's not one specific storyline.

For me, writing the 'X-Men' was easy - is easy. I know these people, they're my friends.

When I'm doing the Justice League stuff, my point of view is always coming through Buddy. And he's a dad, and there's stuff about his life that I relate to with my life, and I can also take the abilities of animals, which a lot of people don't know about me.

I was not creating icons when I wrote the 'The X-Men' and the 'The New Mutants.' I was creating people.

In all my characters, I try to find an iota of myself, and in Castle, I found a lot. He gets away with a lot, so that's fun.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

A novel is utterly your own creation, a very private process. I think of a novel as a noun and a screenplay as a verb. In a novel, very little needs to happen; you can explore a person's memories and thoughts and fantasies. In a screenplay, it's all action; you must push the story on.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

Whenever I'm writing a book, small details from my life always creep in.

And I have the support of the writers: I have a great relationship with the creative team, and they have a good hold of my character and my personality, and they come up with some great stuff, and I'm forever trying to change it up, keep it fresh.

The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

Humanizing good people is kind of boring and I don't really see the value in it... humanizing tricky characters is exhilarating, and making audience films out of indie subjects excites me.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.

There are bits of me in all my characters.

There is always going to be a little bit of me in each character.

I locate that special problem in a character and then try to understand it. That's the genesis of all my work.

The main characters for 'The Seer and the Sword' made an appearance one night and then haunted me for over five years before I began to write them down. Does that count as inspiration? For me, characters tend to show up, stay on to help with the work of writing their stories, and then occasionally deign to visit after a book is finished.

I always find stuff in my characters to relate to.

I think that the mark of a great book is that it will meet you wherever you're at and you'll feel and experience something new and different each time you read it.

I think that, for me, Superman just seemed to make a lot of sense to me. After doing 'Watchmen,' it was - you know that thing, you've got to know the rules before you can break them? There was something about that in making 'Watchmen.'

Every single film I've done, it's about the character.

After a while, the character sort of took over.

I write characters and stories that move me, and I write from the heart.

For the most part, my characters don't talk to me. I like to lord over them like some kind of benevolent deity. And, for the most part, my characters go along with it. I write intense character sketches and long, play-like conversations between me and them, but they stay out of the book writing itself.