J. Michael Straczynski

“Understanding is a three edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.”

“The point of mythology or myth is to point to the horizon and to point back to ourselves: This is who we are; this is where we came from; and this is where we're going. And a lot of Western...”

“My house looks like it was decorated by a 14-year old with a platinum American Express card.”

“On a certain level, I don't think there is an answer to what the American way is, because it is constantly being re-defined. It's also been exploited and capitalized upon and politicized by...”

“The American Way is an amalgam of our compassion, our strengths, our failings and our attempts to build a better world, a more perfect union.”

“We know that if memory is destroyed in one part of the brain, it can be sometimes re-created on a different part of the brain. And once we can unravel that amino chain of chemicals that is r...”

“In every other science fiction series, humans are at the top of the food chain. In the 'Babylon 5' universe, they're in the bottom third.”

“A lot of the futuristic space stuff seemed to me to be a very cool form of science-fiction, so that was my first real baptism in the genre.”

“Every time I got 'Amazing Spider-Man' or 'Fantastic Four' or another book firmly on the rails, we got pulled into some big event book or crossover and it cost momentum and messed badly with...”

“When you're writing a story in bits and pieces, month in and month out, there really isn't time or space for reflection, no room to learn what those scripts had to teach you.”

“Anyone who sets foot into the 'Watchmen' universe and isn't just a little nervous should be given a few days of electroshock therapy. I've always considered 'Watchmen' to be one of the best...”

“Whenever you write for someone else, you're always aware - sometimes overtly, other times at an almost cellular, subliminal level - of the rules about what you can and can't do.”

“Whenever you can bring your chops in as a reporter to unearth a cool story, that's always a good thing.”

“A changeling is one child substituted for another. I couldn't find anything more apt. We had to kind of fight that supernatural element in the publicity, and I offered to try and find anothe...”

“To have someone like Clint Eastwood come along and shoot your first draft as written is just any screenwriter's dream. And Clint is very straightforward. If it's good enough to get his atten...”

“When it comes down to it, the reason that science fiction endures is that it is, at its core, an optimistic genre. What it says at the end of the day is that there is a tomorrow, we do go on...”

“There are those who seem to feel they have no choice about being jerks in the present because they had a crappy childhood. Well, that's the definition of childhood; nobody gets out alive. Yo...”

“Everyone in the entertainment business gets crappy contracts when we start out, and into the middle of our careers. It's the nature of the business.”

“I also like to look at the dynamic that takes place between religion and science because, in a way, both are asking the same questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Wh...”

“I've always been kind of a mutt creatively. I started off in journalism, and I've actually done more police and procedural shows than I've ever done science fiction shows. I was on 'Murder S...”