Jack Kirby
Life at best is bittersweet.Collection: Best
Perfectionists are their own devils.
I was handed a chocolate bar and an M-1 rifle and told to go kill Hitler.
I feel my characters are valid, my characters are people, my characters have hope. Hope is the thing that'll take us through.Collection: Character
The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I'd beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it.Collection: Real
Our dreams make us large.Collection: Dream
I feel that man can transcend himself to a point where he can accomplish greater things than he thinks. I see people depressed and I see people who devalue themselves and I feel that's a terrible, terrible waste. But I love the people who try. But try fairly, try honestly.Collection: Men
It's not in the draftsmanship, it's in the man. Like I say, a tool is dead. A brush is a dead object. It's in the man. If you want to do it, you do it.Collection: Men
Kid ... Comics will break your heart.Collection: Heart
I felt the comics grew because they became the common man's literature, the common man's art, the common man's publishing.Collection: Art
I began to learn about the universe myself and take it seriously. I know the names of the stars. I know how near or far the heavenly bodies are from our own planet. I know our own place in the universe. I can feel the vastness of it inside myself. I began to realize with each passing fact what a wonderful and awesome place the universe is, and that helped me in comics because I was looking for the awesome.Collection: Stars
There are people that I didn't like, but I saw them suffer and it changed me. I promised myself that I would never tell a lie, never hurt another human being, and I would try to make the world as positive as I could.Collection: Hurt
I feel that man can transcend himself to a point where he can accomplish greater things than he thinks.Collection: Men
I was an artist, but not a self-proclaimed great artist, just a common man who was working in a form of art which is universal.Collection: Art
Everybody can draw, in my estimation. If you give a man 50 years, he'll come up with the Mona Lisa.Collection: Men
Once we've learned enough about the universe we will admit to ourselves that we will never know everything.Collection: Enough
I taught myself how to draw, and I soon found out it was what I really wanted to do. I didn't think I was going to create any great masterpieces like Rembrandt or Gauguin. I thought comics was a common form of art, and strictly American in my estimation, because America was the home of the common man - and show me the common man that can't do a comic. So comics is an American form of art that anyone can do with a pencil and paper.Collection: Art
If you think a man draws the type of hands that you want to draw, steal ‘em. Take those hands.Collection: Thinking
The artist is the lowest form of life on the rung of the ladder. The publishers are usually businessmen who deal with businessmen. They deal with promotional people. They deal with financial people. They deal with accountants. They deal with people who work on higher levels. They deal with tax people, but have absolutely no interest in artists, in individual artists, especially very young artists.Collection: Artist
I write from a people's point of view. I love people because I understand them. I understand an enemy, I understand a friend, I understand grey areas, and I understand black areas.Collection: Writing
All human beings have the capability of doing what they want, what they're attracted to.Collection: Want
I've never done anything half-heartedly; it's a disservice to me and the audience if I do it half-heartedly.Collection: Done
I feel that life is a series of very interesting questions, and very poor answers. But I myself am willing to settle for the questions. If the questions are interesting, I feel I evoke them in what I do. I feel that should be good enough for everyone else.Collection: Interesting
My monsters were lovable monsters. I gave them names - some were evil and some were good. They made sales, and that's always been my prime object in comics.Collection: Names
I get a lot of comics, and I can look at a comic and tell immediately whether I'll enjoy it or not. There are elements in the stories that I have no rapport with. I see dirty language, I see sleazy backgrounds; I see it reflected in the movies, the movies are comics to me. And I don't see a sleazy world. I see hope. I see a positive world.Collection: Dirty
Superman is going to live forever. They'll be reading Superman in the next century when you and I are gone. I felt, in that respect, I was doing the same thing. I wanted to be known. I wasn't going to sell a comic that was going to die quickly.Collection: Reading
There was violence because first of all, there were ethnic differences and names. If you were small, they called you a runt, and you had to do something about that even if there were five other guys.Collection: Names
If a carpenter makes a chair that's comfortable for the person who's going to sit in it, he's done his job. If a train engineer gets a train in on time, he's going to make someone happy who's waiting at the station. And if an artist draws the kind of a picture that people are going to enjoy looking at, or he makes a visual story which people are going to enjoy reading, he's done his job.Collection: Jobs
There was one time they knocked me out and laid me in front of my mother's door. And in order for my mother not to be shocked they readjusted my clothes and they saw that nothing was rumpled and I looked very comfortable next to the apartment door, so when my mother would open the door it wouldn't be that much of a shock.Collection: Mother
Comics have a caste system - an editor has to act in a certain way, an artist has to be humble.Collection: Humble
I was a good student in the subjects that I wanted to be good in. The curriculum in my section was excellent.Collection: Curriculum
Aw, where we come from the Anti-Life Equation is one of many others--almost as awesome!! But they merely exist!!Collection: Where We Come
The people who worked in comics were terrific guys. I had a good association with them, and I enjoyed comics for that very reason.Collection: People
My parents loved me. My father used to carry me around on my shoulders. I know my father loved me. All families love their children, and we were good boys.Collection: Children
I'm a happy man because whatever I'm doing, I do for myself and I do a little creating here and there for others, and they work out very well.Collection: Men
When Superman came out it galvanized the entire industry. It's just part of the American scene.Collection: Scene
An American is a guy, a rich guy with a family, a decent guy with a family with as many kids as he likes, doing what he wants, working with people that he likes, and enjoying himself to his very old age.Collection: Kids
I'm a guy who had to perform some way. I had to perform in some way. If not as an actor, I'd perform as an artist. It would have been something that would be outstanding in its own way.Collection: Artist
I've never done anything bad. I can't do anything bad. It's got to be professional. It's got to look professional. It's got to read professional. In other words, it serves its purpose by entertaining a reader.Collection: Looks
A climb-out fight is where you climb a building. You climb fire escapes. You climb to the top of the building. You fight on the roof, and you fight all the way down again.Collection: Fighting
I didn't have an affinity for horror. But I knew that commercially it was viable.Collection: Horror
You had to grow up sometime. The fellows who grew early, they were in jeopardy. They became the cops and the crooks, and the crooks became the gangsters. The crooks became the Al Capones.Collection: Growing Up
I won't do anything bad, and I resent very deeply bad people who haven't got the ability, who try to interfere with the kind of work I'm trying to do because nobody's going to benefit from it.Collection: People
I tried to, from my very early years, I've been an inveterate movie goer and still am and I, I love the medium. So what I, what I draw and what I'm still doing, is part of that particular orientation.Collection: Years
If America gave anybody anything it is ambition. Bad things would come out of it because some guys are in a hurry, but that doesn't mean they're evil or anything, it just means they fall into bad grace somehow.Collection: Fall
My purpose was what my father's purpose was - to make a living and to have a family. I was going to do the right thing. My dream to me was to have money to support it and to live in the kind of house I liked.Collection: Dream
My parents were immigrants. And the place for all immigrants was the factories. They were the source of cheap labor.Collection: Parent
I didn't save my money for a lawyer. I was a very young man, and saved my money for having a good time.Collection: Men
I would've liked to have been a better businessman when I was younger. And of course, I couldn't, because it wasn't part of my atmosphere. I never lived with accountants, I never lived with lawyers.Collection: Atmosphere
If you're drawing a Western town, you can duplicate that Western town from instinct alone. Some artists may take it from other illustrations or duplicate what you've drawn, but it will never have that gut reality that's instinctive in the artist.Collection: Artist