Joss Whedon
Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women.Collection: Equality
I love a good romantic comedy.Collection: Romantic
Why anybody gets my sense of humor I never know, but I do know that when they do, I keep them as close as I possibly can.Collection: Humor
There's a lot of anger in the Twitter-verse, as I've discovered. But there's a lot of love.Collection: Anger
Horror movies don't exist unless you go and see them, and people always will.Collection: Movies
My mom is a teacher, my dad was a writer for television, his dad was a writer for television, and combining those two has been sort of the goal of my life.Collection: Teacher
I loved teaching and I did a lot of work as a teacher's assistant in college, and my favorite experience was basically getting a laugh from a bunch of people because they had just understood something.Collection: Teacher
I never write anything without humor, just because I like humor, but at the same time, it is a way for anything fantastical to become relatable.Collection: Humor
I also don't trust Caribou anymore. They're out there, on the tundra, waiting... Something's going down. I'm right about this.Collection: Trust
Loneliness is about the scariest thing out there.
The secret to multitasking is that it isn't actually multitasking. It's just extreme focus and organization.
Always be yourself... unless you suck.
Every kid who hated grownups becomes a grownup. Well, except the ones who died.
Never sit at a table you can't walk away from.
'The Dark Knight,' for me, has the same problem that every other 'Batman' movie has. It's not about Batman. I think Heath Ledger is just phenomenal and the character of the Joker is beautifully written. He has a particular philosophy that he carries throughout the movie. He has one of the best bad guy schemes.
I was not popular in school, and I was definitely not a ladies' man. And I had a very painful adolescence, because it was all very strange to me. It wasn't like I got beat up, but the humiliation and isolation, and the existential 'God, I exist, and nobody cares' of being a teenager were extremely pronounced for me.
Ultimately what I end up writing about is helplessness and the flipside of that, empowerment.
Absolutely eat dessert first. The thing that you want to do the most, do that.
My favorite part of Comic-Con? The groupies.
I don't write just to be clever. But sometimes I do. And if you don't have an understanding of the language, then the way in which it's bent doesn't actually register. It's the old you-gotta-paint-like-them-before-you-can-paint-like-you thing.
You know, the thing that I do to waste time is think of things I want to make. That's how my mind is employed.
We need narrative; it feeds us in a particular way, and deconstructing it completely before you've actually experienced it, I think it leaves us unfed.
You know, I always was an early morning or late night writer. Early morning was my favorite; late night was because you had a deadline. And at four in the morning you make up some of your most absurd jokes.
I don't think I'm a celebrity. Maybe I'm a cult figure?
I love a straightforward character. I am the guy who loves Cyclops on the 'X-Men', because he is square.
A writer is supposed to have anonymity.
I have an obligation to do press, but I don't have an obligation to stay out dancing until 3 A.M.
Those of us who write spend our entire lives in an endless English class.
When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?'
When you're making a film, you have an obligation to fill the frame with life.
I never wanted to take a job because I needed money, and I never have.
Actors wait tables, directors work at video stores.
It's not any huge secret that I'm an atheist.
I love all genres. The only thing I get stymied by is the Family Drama. I don't necessarily know how to approach that.
The misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it.
I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that's been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it's been in development.
I always enjoy conversation more if there is some substance to it - which is a just incredibly hilarious thing for me to say because for many, many years I was the guy whose only contribution to any conversation was, 'There was a funny 'Simpson's' joke about that.'
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.
Every vampire fiction reinvents vampires to its own needs. You take what you want.
I'm a very gentle man, not unlike Gandhi.
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.
Oddly enough, I never studied writing. I studied almost everything except writing.
Part of making TV is the process - you just have to churn it out.
I always believe in just have as much fun as you can so that when you're in the part that you hate, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, that you're close to finished.
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.
Every writer loves the idea of being able to go in and fix a problem and then leave without obligation. It's fun!
TV's like whitewater rafting: Without rocks, there wouldn't be rapids, and it wouldn't be as much fun.
Limitations are something that I latch onto - like working in genre, or if you're writing TV, there are act breaks, there's a length of time it's supposed to be. The restrictions of budget and sets can be really useful. When you can have everything, it's very hard to make things feel real and lived in.
I've seen plenty of films where the projector broke. The problems that we have in the digital age are exactly the same as we had. Instead of, 'There's a hair in the gate,' it's, 'The computer ate the footage.' There will always be things like that going on. Nothing is perfect.
When I was a kid, maybe 11, I remember saying, 'When I grow up I wanna have enough money to buy a really cool car, because I won't.'