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pull-quotes
08-07-2014, 11:57 PM
For historical (and, potentially, allohistorical) context. I'll post more as I find or think of them; please add anything that strikes you as relevant.
"Ich sah den neuen Menschen, furchtlos und grausam. Ich erschrak vor ihm!" (I saw the New Man, intrepid and cruel. I was terrified of him!)
-- attributed to Adolf Hitler, Gespräche mit Hitler by Hermann Rauschning (first published in English as Hitler Speaks, 1939)
"Superman or Green Lantern ain't got
Nothin' on me"
-- Donovan, "Sunshine Superman" (1966)
"I saw the decade end
When it seemed the world could change in the blink of an eye"
-- Jesus Jones, "Right Here Right Now" (1990)
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"I'm burning 'cross the sky, yeah,
Two hundred degrees, that's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit...
I'm travelling at the speed of light...
I'm gonna make a supersonic man out of you!"
-- Queen, "Don't Stop Me Now"
'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi, Mom!
-- Laurie Anderson, "O Superman"
"I tried it on my German Shepherd. It worked for both of us and now he's my arch enemy, Dr. German Shepherd. I have to save the world from him every month, which is a real bummer."
-- The Dogcatcher, Queens, NY (on "Developing a New Secret Formula" from How to be a Superhero)
You may cry that I'm the villain, and you whine that I am bad,
While I give your life some interest, and a reason to be sad.
You're all unfit to judge me, yet you'll judge me if you can.
And if you think I'm Evil, clearly you don't understand.
-- "Falconsbane" by Michael Longcor
I'm a most superior being, I'm the hero of my mind,
Well equipped to rule and dictate to the cattle of your kind.
Though I'm blamed for all your misery, for each sorrow small and large,
I don't want to be a monster... I just want to be in charge!
-- "Falconsbane" by Michael Longcor
Buttercup: You can't just buy superpowers!
Princess: Oh yeah? Tell that to Batman.
-- from The Powerpuff Girls
Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain.
-- Norman Mailer, The Presidential Papers
There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify -- so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.
-- John Keats
Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
Galileo: No, unhappy the land that needs heroes.
-- Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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...wow. Not quotes I would've thought of in the IST context, but I can see them all working somewhere in the book. *applauds*
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Thank you, but really, they're just a quick extract from my quotefile. Some of them probably won't be appropriate anywhere... we'll just have to see when we get that far.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Fair enough. Though, after reading the Wikipedia page on "O Superman" and learning what (besides the Massenet aria) inspired it, I can see it being used somewhere around that time in the history chapter. And the PPG quote would do well in the technology chapter, befitting the theme of what would be called "manufacturable foci" in Wild Talents terms.
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I'm ashamed I forgot this one, but it's probably because I associate it less with K-1's military supers than with the "elites" (mercenary novas) from Aberrant.
"Andre has a red flag
Chiang Ching's is blue
They all have hills to fly them on
Except for Lin Tai Yu
Dressing up in costumes
Playing silly games
Hiding out in tree tops
Shouting out rude names...
If looks could kill they probably will
In games without frontiers
War without tears"
-- Peter Gabriel, "Games Without Frontiers"
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"Me and myself killed a world today
Me and myself got a world to save"
-- Monster Magnet, "Negasonic Teenage Warhead"
"Built in my nightmares and using my name
You're stroking my cortex and you know I'm insane"
-- Monster Magnet, "Space Lord"
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On the use of real time:
"'I'm actually gonna be older than Batman?' This was unacceptable. Something had to be done."
-- Frank Miller, on why he decided to write The Dark Knight Returns
"Next you'll want him to get old and die."
-- Joe Quesada, on those Spider-Man fans who objected to his erasure of Peter Parker's marriage
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I was living in Mississippi when the original I.S.T. came out:
"If I go crazy, then will you still call me Superman?
If I'm alive and well, will you be there holding my hand?"
-- 3 Doors Down, "Kryptonite"
Last Free Human
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"I turn around for one minute and you're 90 years old and covered in robots!"
--Ted Grant, Wildcat, Batman: Brave and the Bold
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
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Stan Lee had a great quote about "Who would win?" debates, but darn it if I can't remember the exact quote....
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
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You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty. -- Henrik Ibson
It burned like a cancer when the answer did occur to me,
Creep from the cradle, but a hero's what I wanna be.
Keep it moving, people, 'cause there's nothing more for you to see,
I'm just a jerk, but a hero's what I wanna be.
-- "Hero", Brian Vanderark of The Verve Pipe
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Another dose of historical perspective:
"Hypodermics on the shore
China's under martial law
Rock'n'roller cola wars
I can't take it anymore!"
-- Billy Joel, "We Didn't Start the Fire"
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For a speedster:
But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.
- Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
For an anarchist villain:
Chaos is a friend of mine.
- Bob Dylan, Newsweek, 9 December 1985
For deconstructing the four-color mentality:
I guess it just doesn't look very heroic to sneak up behind somebody and shoot them in the back. I can't help thinking it would be more efficient, though.
– Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior's Apprentice
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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"Any threat to world peace is a job for the Science Police."
-- Donald Saxman, Superhero 2044 (Gamescience, 1977)
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As suitable for the cut-down version as for the full-size one.
"None of them look exactly happy, even for a funeral..."
"They're Eighties people."
-- Elijah Snow and Jakita Wagner, Planetary #7 ("To Be in England, in the Summertime") by Warren Ellis
BELATED EDIT: "look exactly happen" (emphasis added)? And it's said that for almost three months without my noticing? *face meets palm*
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RE: pull-quotes
10-03-2015, 07:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-29-2021, 09:54 PM by Mamorien.
Edit Reason: Removed Dr. Sandifer's deadname. Tried to whiten some blacktext, but it wasn't marked up as such.
)
Relevant quotes from, and via, the latest inciting exstallment of The Last War in Albion:
"If somehow our children ever see the day in which it is announced that we do not have these weapons anymore, that we can no longer destroy ourselves and that we’ve got to come up with something else to do with our time, then they will have the right to throw up their arms and let down the streamers and let forth a resounding cheer."
-- Alan Moore, England Their England: Monsters, Maniacs, and Moore (1987)
"Was I telling you about those political bookshops my dad used to take me to? What was I saying? Those terrible ban-the-bombzines; when you're a kid they just look like comics at first but they're not. It's all screaming Hiroshima faces, burning cities. I used to imagine God was a skeleton and the thunder was the sound of his big, black iron train. War, apocalypse… they were like comics from hell. It really fucked me up."
-- Grant Morrison, Flex Mentallo: After the Fact #3 (1996)
"Before it was a Bomb, the Bomb was an Idea. Superman, however, was a Faster, Stronger, Better Idea. It’s not that I needed Superman to be 'real,' I just needed him to be more real than the Idea of the Bomb that ravaged my dreams."
-- Morrison, Supergods: what masked vigilantes, miraculous mutants, and a sun god from Smallville can teach us about being human (2011)
"They're about as far from social realism as you can get, but the best superhero stories deal directly with mythic elements of human experience that we can all relate to, in ways that are imaginative, profound, funny, and provocative. They exist to solve problems of all kinds and can always be counted on to find a way to save the day. At their best, they help us to confront and resolve even the deepest existential crises. We should listen to what they have to tell us."
-- Supergods
"In Moore's eyes there is a rot intrinsic to superheroes; something about it which inevitably gives way to a terrifying cruelty. To use the tagline for another Supergods, 'praying to a man who can fly will get you killed.' In Watchmen, the people look up and whisper 'save us' and Ozymandias nukes them with a fake alien. The only alternative to this salvation is Rorschach's psychopathic obsession and the chance actions of an incompetent errand boy for a right-wing tabloid. Superheroes are not the answer, but rather the problem. Moreover, however, they’re a very specific problem. The major divergence from established US history, aside from the perpetual reelection of Richard Nixon, is that Doctor Manhattan’s destabilizing effect on the Cold War, especially once he departs the Earth, ends up making it substantially less cold. In other words, the ultimate expression of the nuclear bomb is the living weapon."
-- Elizabeth Sandifer, "She saw places that aren't even there any more! (The Last War in Albion Book Two Part 12: Pax Americana)" (2015)
One subject, two different views. Twelve-and-six in a plain wrapper.
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