You Pretentious You

Moore argued that the arrival of a genuine superhero would quickly and radically alter society forever. The Justice League or Avengers could not be assimilated into any recognizable world as they appeared to be in the Marvel and DC universes. Superhumans would signal the end of the human and deform history itself with the gravity of their presence.

How do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice?

Even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not be reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. [...] For the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key.

If man is stupid, then who is wise?

Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.

The enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one's own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man.

The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was "sublime and beautiful," the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.

People never really go into the killer's state of mind. They only think they do - I reckon it's because they're too frightened of what they might find buried in themselves if they really got in there. Frightened they couldn't get out again. So they do it the easy way, waste their time trying to assess a killer by their own standards, it's just childish, you can't catch the moon in a butterfly net.

What I have done, detective, is what we all most desire to do, each in his own way - to be beyond time, nature, people, years, women. I am a hero - and yet what's heroic about fighting your way out of a heap of shit?

If they used the amount of television time they spend on smoking telling the public about the things we deal with in here they'd realise that we all might as well die of lung cancer. We're too disgusting to live.

Do whatever you like in this world except damage.

Everyone says my case is a nasty business, and you spoke up and said I was a total disaster. But I don't believe I am the disaster - I think I'm just a reminder that people are living in one.