Joss Whedon Quotes

Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead.

Wanna know what a bullet feels like, Warren? A real one? It’s not like in the comics…I think you need to. Feel it…It’s not going to make a neat little hole. First - it’ll obliterate your internal organs. Your lung will collapse, feels like drowning…When it finally hits your spine, it’ll blow your central nervous system-…I’m talking. The pain will be unbearable, but you won’t be able to move… A bullet usually travels faster than this, of course. But the dying? It seems like it takes forever. Something, isn’t it? One tiny piece of metal destroys everything. It ripped her insides out… It took her light away. From me. From the world… And now the one person who should be here is gone - and a waste like you gets to live. A tiny piece of metal. Can you feel it now?

If you can't do something smart, do something right.

Loneliness is about the scariest thing out there.

The thing about changing the world... Once you do it, the world's all different.

Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself.

Everything we do really is just a little marker on the long road to death. And sometimes that’s overwhelmingly depressing to me, and sometimes it makes me feel kinship and forgiveness. We’ve all got the same ending to the story. The way we make that story more elaborate, I got to respect.

My people - before I was changed - they exchanged this as a sign of devotion. It's a Claddagh ring. The hands represent friendship; the crown represents loyalty... and the heart... Well, you know... Wear it with the heart pointing towards you. It means you belong to somebody. Like this.

You can't take the sky from me.

Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE.

The news isn't there to tell you what happened. It's there to tell you what it wants you to hear or what it thinks you want to hear.

War is not just the business of death, it is the antitheses of life.

Seven years, Dawn. Working with the Slayer. Seeing my friends get more and more powerful... a witch. A demon. Hell, I could fit Oz in my shaving kit, but come a full moon, he had a wolfy mojo not to be messed with. Powerful, all of them. And I'm the guy who fixes the windows. They'll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn't Chosen, to live so near the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes because nobody's watching me. I saw you last night, and I see you working here today. You're not special; you're extraordinary.

Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.

It is the most fun I’m ever going to have. I love to write. I love it. I mean, there’s nothing in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I’m so very bad at it. It’s the greatest peace when I’m in a scene, and it’s just me and the character, that’s it, that’s where I want to live my life.

Ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross. Know what the first rule of flying is? Well I s'pose you do, since you already know what I'm 'bout to say.I do. But I like to hear you say it.Love. Can know all the math in the 'verse but take a boat in the air that you don't love? She'll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home.

I'd rather make a show 100 people need to see, than a show that 1000 people want to see.

Why do you write strong female characters?Because you're still asking me that question.

I just thought, ‘Wait a minute, if I’m going to start writing again, I have to go to the quiet place.' And this is the least quiet place I’ve ever been in my life. … It’s like taking the bar exam at Coachella. It’s like, ‘Um, I really need to concentrate on this! Guys! Can you all just…I have to…It’s super important for my law!

I also felt that Ron and Hermione would have gotten divorced. I'm sorry, I just do. The end of Harry Potter did feel ultimately to me...just the fact everybody had married everybody. The books were so real and so grounded in what things are really like when you're that age, she nailed that so beautifully. And then there was this slightly fantastical ending. I know that was there for her to say, 'Really, I mean it, no more books,' but you do sort of go, people who were in a war are different from people who haven't been, and how does it affect them? But am I going to second-guess my favorite writer? I think not.

The times are chaotic. For me, I would hope that people look at [Angel] and gain strength by it. With everything that I do, I hope that they see people struggling to live decent, moral lives in a completely chaotic world. They see how hard it is, how often they fail, and how they get up and keep trying. That, to me, is the most important message I'm ever going to tell.

Do you love me?What?Do you?I love you. I don't know if I trust you.Maybe you shouldn't do either.Maybe I'm the one who should decide!

Back in my day, which was about a week and a half ago, we took our lumps and we got back up and we cried like babies and quit and then put on weight.

When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it?

In my generation, there was a single girl given the strength and skill to fight the spread of darkness...but in your generation, there are nearly two thousand with the powers of the slayer, and not all of them have chosen to use their newfound abilities conscientiously.

If every vampire who said he was at The Crucifixion, was actually there, it would have been like Woodstock . . .

The enemy of humanism is not faith; the enemy of humanism is hate, is fear, is ignorance, is the darker part of man that is in every humanist, every person, in the world. That is the thing we have to fight. Faith is something we have to embrace. Faith in God is believing absolutely in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary.

There's no fuzzy middle ground. You either believe that women are people or you don't. It's that simple.

Sadly, I hate foreigners. And Americans. And animals. And flora, and some fauna. Also the magma that is the very core of this our mother earth. I'm full o' hate!

Ultron: Stark asked for a savior, and settled for a slave.The Vision: I suppose we're both disappointments.Ultron: [laughs] I suppose we are.The Vision: Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won't be. But there is grace in their failings. I think you missed that.Ultron: They're doomed!The Vision: Yes... but a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts. It is a privilege to be among them.Ultron: You're unbelievably naïve.The Vision: Well, I was born yesterday.

If the apocalypse comes...beep me!

Something can be very funny and then suddenly very terrifying-very exciting, and suddenly very ridiculous. I think that’s what life is like, that’s what interests me.

Recognizing power in another does not diminish your own.

Anything can be good. Even Last Action Hero could’ve been good. There’s an idea somewhere in almost any movie : if you can find something that you love, then you can do it. If you can’t, it doesn’t matter how skilful you are...

It was only when I got to college that I realized that the rest of the world didn't run the way my world was run, and that there was a need for feminism. I'd thought it was all solved. There are people like my mom, clearly everyone is equal and it's all fine. Then I get into the world and I hear the things people are saying. Then I get to Hollywood and hear the very casual, almost insidious misogyny that just runs through so much of the fiction. It was just staggering to me.

Everything I do in its essence is about helplessness. That's the story I want to tell all the time. It's the story I wanted to live - somebody who appears to be, or is, weak becoming stronger.

The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn't look like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, he's going to keep digging, he's going to keep trying to do right and make up for what's gone before, just because that's who he is.

Everything I do is going to contain the message that men who are going to be comfortable with powerful women are going to be more powerful men

There was this other apocalypse this one time. And, well, I took off. But this time, I don't... I don't know." "Well, what's different?" "Well, I guess I was kinda new to being around humans before. And now I've seen a lot more, gotten to know people, seen what they're capable of and I guess I just realize how amazingly... screwed up they all are. I mean, really, really screwed up in a monumental fashion." "Oh." "And they have no purpose that unites them, so they just drift around, blundering through life until they die. Which they-they know is coming, yet every single one of them is surprised when it happens to them. They're incapable of thinking about what they want beyond the moment. They kill each other, which is clearly insane, and yet, here's the thing. When it's something that really matters, they fight. I mean, they're lame morons for fighting. But they do. They never... They never quit. And so I guess I will keep fighting, too.

All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet -- it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once...Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

You're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

Very occasionally, if you pay really close attention, life doesn't suck.

I'll take crazy over stupid any day.

If you're going to make a science fiction movie, then have a hover craft chase, for God's sake.

Faith in God means believing absolutely in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers.

Everyone has their first date and the object is to hide your flaws. And then you're in a relationship, and it's all about hiding your disappointment. And then, once you're married, it's about hiding your sins.

Don’t give people what they want, give them what they need.

To forgive is an act of compassion... It's not done because people deserve it. It's done because they need it.

Shiny, let's be bad guys!

I've got a theory, it could be bunnies...I've got a theor-Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposesThey've got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses.And what's with all the carrots-?What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?Bunnies, bunnies it must be bunnies!...or maybe midgets...

At the end of the day I have many answers for it. It has to do with my mom, who was an extraordinary woman, and a great feminist. It has to do with the people in my life. It has to do with a lot of different things, but -- I don't know! Because I'm not just writing from the female characters for other people. I have a desire to see them in our culture -- that was not met for most of my childhood. Except occasionally by James Cameron. [From the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, in response to being asked why he writes strong female characters.]

When you’re telling a story, you’re trying to connect to people in a particular way … The way in which you guys have inhabited this world, this universe, has made you part of it, part of the story. You are living in Firefly. When I see you guys, I don’t think the show is off the air. I don’t think there’s a show; I think that’s what the world is like. … The story is our lives.

The English Language is my bitch. Or I don't speak it very well. Whatever.

So, why do you write these strong female characters?Because you’re still asking me that ques

Misogyny… 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 is confronted with it.

If you can't run, you crawl. If you can't crawl-- you find someone to carry you.

That girl will rain destruction down on you and your ship. She is an albatross, Captain. Way I remember it, albatross was a ship's good luck, 'til some idiot killed it. (to Inara) Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer.

Tonight sucks. And look at me. Look at - look at stupid Buffy. Too dumb for college, and-and-and freak Buffy, too strong for construction work. And-and my job at the magic shop? I was bored to tears even before the hour that wouldn't end. And the only person that I can even stand to be around is a... neutered vampire who cheats at kitten poker.