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" You can't tell a Batman story without the Joker, and you can't tell a Joker story without Batman. They're just the symbols of the best and worst of humanity. "
Tom King
You
Worst
Story
Related Quotes:
" If you're a writer, you're constantly doubting yourself. "
Tom King
Doubting
Writer
You
" My scripts, they're pretty serious. I basically just describe stuff. I don't put too many notes and letters to the editors. But when I wrote 'KGBLT,' in parentheses I wrote, 'Well this is the best thing I've ever written. It will all be downhill from here. I'm so sorry for the rest of my career.' "
Tom King
Career
Rest
Sorry
" When I write, I see the pages in my head, not the words. "
Tom King
Write
Words
See
" My dad left when I was young. I didn't have a dad. I'm part of that divorced generation and didn't want to do that to my kids, so I took a year off and became a full-time dad, changed diapers and all that while my wife worked. "
Tom King
Wife
Off
Generation
" My first book is called 'Carry the Three.' It's definitely in a drawer, and it's terrible. I never sent it to anybody. My wife read it, but nobody else. "
Tom King
Three
Wife
Book
" Literally, over a weekend, Friday to Monday, I went from a C.I.A. officer to changing diapers and putting the kid in a Bjorn and going to the playground and hanging out with all the nannies. I was the only dad - everyone kind of gave me strange looks because of our sexist society. "
Tom King
Friday
Me
Society
" I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page. "
Tom King
Experiences
Writing
Firm
" I'm a comic book writer, so I work with a lot of artists. Sometimes, you get art back, and you're like, 'Oh, no.' Sometimes, you get art back and you're like, 'That's exactly what I imagined in my head,' and you're happy about that. "
Tom King
Book
You
Work
" As ever, I caveat with saying that I don't write about the factual content of my C.I.A. experience. Ever. People who are working hard to save lots of lives depend on me to keep my mouth shut. "
Tom King
Mouth
People
Saying
" Not to get political, but it seems like every day I read the paper, and you're reading about nuclear war and Russians taking over the country and Nazis again. It's like every once in a while, the world blinks for a second, and it goes, 'Darkseid is!' The world has changed, and it's changed in a 'Darkseid is' way. "
Tom King
War
Day
Political
" I love continuity. I was a continuity nerd growing up. I loved buying a comic in the middle of something and loved digging for back issues or going forward and trying to figure it all out. "
Tom King
Loved
Trying
Growing Up
" I went to college in New York. I interned at Vertigo, and then I interned at Marvel working for Chris Claremont. Just to age myself, this was in 2000. "
Tom King
New
Age
New York
" Writing is weaponized empathy. It's putting yourself in someone else's head. It's finding what's in them that relates to you. "
Tom King
Finding
Empathy
Writing
" I think sometimes you go through an experience, and you don't feel the impact, especially in a war experience, until way past it. "
Tom King
Impact
Experience
Past
" I try not to push characters too close to myself because they get harder to write, but as a writer, you try to find odd little personal experiences that you hope are universal or think might be universal. "
Tom King
Push
Find
Hope
" Sometimes I understand how Bruce Wayne feels. When you take down a terrorist or something, there's always six guys to take their place. Everyone is Hydra. But you still have to do it. "
Tom King
Understand
You
Sometimes
" I've been the desperate writer before. I wrote a novel, and they paid me for it, and I've had those calls from my agent, and I'm like, 'Do you need me to ghost-write a vampire novel? What do you need? I'll do Transformers... tell me!' "
Tom King
Me
Like
Need
" I have my dream job. If I was seven years old and you asked me what I'd want to be 30 years from now, I'd say exactly who I am. So, 'rare' and 'lucky' are the exact right words. It took a lot of hard work, and I took a weird route to get here, but man, am I grateful for it. "
Tom King
Grateful
Man
Me
" My novel got published, and I became a paid writer, which was nice, and then it came out, and nobody bought it, so I became an unemployed writer again. "
Tom King
Nice
Writer
Out
" Batman's not mine. He doesn't necessarily belong to me. As a character, he belongs first to the audience and second to the hundreds of writers who have been writing him in comics for 75 years. "
Tom King
Me
Him
Character
" You throw sadness, you throw depression, you throw horror at Batman, he's like, 'Yeah, yawn, I've done that.' You throw happiness at him? That's something that riles him; that's something that he's not used to. "
Tom King
Sadness
Him
Happiness
" It's good to be a cynic. I'm a cynic. But the best part of being a cynic is somebody proving you wrong. "
Tom King
Proving
You
Wrong
" It's hard to find a unique look for a Batman villain. Everything like a scar on the face, or a skin condition, there are so many unique signifiers taken. "
Tom King
Look
Face
Unique
" I've said this before, but I don't like putting captions in my comic books. I feel, for me, they become a crutch, a way to ignore the essential fact that our medium is a visual medium, and the greatest pleasures to be derived from comics are how stories can be told with pictures. "
Tom King
Way
Ignore
Feel
" I wanted to write about the Trump era, but I didn't want to write, 'Fascism sucks' or 'Trump sucks.' That doesn't get you anywhere. "
Tom King
Write
You
Want
" I wanted to look like the most diverse writer in comics! Spy genre, space genre, crime genre, and then you realize that it's all actually the same thing. "
Tom King
Look
Space
You
" That's all the Joker is. It's Batman without love. The Riddler is the opposite of that. It's the detective in him. "
Tom King
Joker
Him
Detective
" I served my country; I did that. I was in the C.I.A., and I served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I love this country with every part of my body, and I was willing to risk my body and my family for it. But I wake up in a country I don't understand anymore. "
Tom King
Wake Up
Love
Family
" If you actually read the 'New Gods' tetralogy, this epic without an ending, it's like dipping your head into madness. You feel a little bit like the Joker for a little while. And I mean that in the best way possible. "
Tom King
Joker
You
Ending
" When I was 12, I used to ride my scooter two miles to a comics shop, which I can't imagine letting my kids do by themselves through the city. "
Tom King
Through
Miles
Imagine