Best 93 quotes of Jack Kirby on MyQuotes

A climb-out fight is where you climb a building. You climb fire escapes. You climb to the top of the building. You fight on the roof, and you fight all the way down again.

All life on Earth is subject to the rumbles and rockings of the parent stucture which has no control over the disastrous effects of its stresses and strains on whatever thrives on its surface. The ambitions and dreams of men are irrelevant to this planetary giant which pursues its own way in its own manner. Man is its child, tenant and still, to this date, its captive.

A man is entitled to draw things in his own style. I didn't hurt Superman. I made him powerful. I admire Superman, but I've got to do my own style.

An American is a guy, a rich guy with a family, a decent guy with a family with as many kids as he likes, doing what he wants, working with people that he likes, and enjoying himself to his very old age.

An artist has to be humble, an editor must be officious, and a publisher must be somewhere out in the galaxy enjoying godhood. It was a caste system, pure and simple. And it was accepted that way. Nobody thought of contracts, nobody thought of insisting on better deals.

Any kind of music can be written badly and it can be written wonderfully. I admire a top performer in any field.

Comics have a caste system - an editor has to act in a certain way, an artist has to be humble.

Everybody was wary. This was a time when communists marched through the streets, waving flags and shouting. The unions did the same thing so you began to associate them.

Every father was his own man. He did what he wanted. If your mother went shopping, your father never went with her.

I achieved perfection, my type of perfection - visual storytelling. Storytelling was my style.

I admired anybody who could make a buck with his drawing.

I always enjoyed doing monster books. Monster books gave me the opportunity to draw things out of the ordinary. Monster books were a challenge - what kind of monster would fascinate people?

I always resent anybody interfering with anybody else trying to do his job. Everybody has his own job to do. If he's good, he'll do well, but if he's mediocre, he's not going to do as well as he should.

I began to learn about the universe myself and take it seriously. I know the names of the stars. I know how near or far the heavenly bodies are from our own planet. I know our own place in the universe. I can feel the vastness of it inside myself. I began to realize with each passing fact what a wonderful and awesome place the universe is, and that helped me in comics because I was looking for the awesome.

I came out of school one day, and there was this pulp magazine. It was a rainy day, and it was floating toward the sewer in the gutter. So I pick up this pulp magazine, and it's Wonder Stories, and it's got a rocket-ship on the cover, and I'd never seen a rocket-ship.

I could do whatever I liked to do during the day. I didn't have to work in an office. I could work at home. I could work at my leisure. I worked 'til four in the morning. I worked with the TV and radio on - it was a great setup. I was a night person and still am.

I couldn't draw anything that was too outlandish or too horrible. I never did that. What I did draw was something intriguing. There was something about this monster that you could live with. If you saw him you wouldn't faint dead away.

I didn't save my money for a lawyer. I was a very young man, and saved my money for having a good time.

I'd had a belly-full of being subservient. I had to find something else to do, and I did. I went to the animation houses. I went to new fields.

I didn't have an affinity for horror. But I knew that commercially it was viable.

I didn't like Army life. I didn't like taking orders. I didn't like discipline. I didn't like being yelled at. You'd get 10 years for punching a sergeant so I couldn't punch a sergeant.

I didn't resolve the questions... and I find that entertaining. And if my life were to end tomorrow, it would be fulfilled in that manner. I would say, 'The questions have been terrific.'

I don't like to work in an office. I like to work in my house, to be among my own thoughts. The idea is for an editor to let his artist alone, let them be themselves, let them exchange their own ideas and you'll come up with something salable.

I draw people as I see them. I'm not involved in making artistic masterpieces. My, my object is to mirror people and I've always done that.

If a carpenter makes a chair that's comfortable for the person who's going to sit in it, he's done his job. If a train engineer gets a train in on time, he's going to make someone happy who's waiting at the station. And if an artist draws the kind of a picture that people are going to enjoy looking at, or he makes a visual story which people are going to enjoy reading, he's done his job.

If America gave anybody anything it is ambition. Bad things would come out of it because some guys are in a hurry, but that doesn't mean they're evil or anything, it just means they fall into bad grace somehow.

I feel like an independent man, and I am. This is the kind of feeling I always wanted. You can rarely get that... Well, I could rarely get that in the early part of my life.

I feel my characters are valid, my characters are people, my characters have hope. Hope is the thing that'll take us through.

I feel that any man that tries, any man that comes out with something we like, is a good man. A man doesn't have to be Leonardo Da Vinci to be sincere.

I feel that every professional is the art school for the next guy. I feel that maybe a lot of the dynamism in my own work, having been felt by the rest of the artists, they'll react to it and put elements of that in their own work, feeling that it'll help it.

I feel that life is a series of very interesting questions, and very poor answers. But I myself am willing to settle for the questions. If the questions are interesting, I feel I evoke them in what I do. I feel that should be good enough for everyone else.

I feel that my characters all have some part of my character. I feel that they're all me in some way, certainly not in individuality, but they all bear elements of what I feel.

I feel that man can transcend himself to a point where he can accomplish greater things than he thinks. I see people depressed and I see people who devalue themselves and I feel that's a terrible, terrible waste. But I love the people who try. But try fairly, try honestly.

I feel that man can transcend himself to a point where he can accomplish greater things than he thinks.

I felt the comics grew because they became the common man's literature, the common man's art, the common man's publishing.

If you're a thorough professional, and they won't let you do a professional job, nobody's going to benefit from it. The people who produce it won't benefit. The people who buy it won't benefit from it. They're going to get a half-assed product.

If you're drawing a Western town, you can duplicate that Western town from instinct alone. Some artists may take it from other illustrations or duplicate what you've drawn, but it will never have that gut reality that's instinctive in the artist.

If you think a man draws the type of hands that you want to draw, steal ‘em. Take those hands.

I get a lot of comics, and I can look at a comic and tell immediately whether I'll enjoy it or not. There are elements in the stories that I have no rapport with. I see dirty language, I see sleazy backgrounds; I see it reflected in the movies, the movies are comics to me. And I don't see a sleazy world. I see hope. I see a positive world.

I had to make a living. I was a married man. I had a wife. I had a home. I had children. I had to make a living. That's the common pursuit of every man.

I had very high respect for the Pratt Institute, but I thought that I had done my best, and that was not their version of the best.

I hated to fight all the time just to enjoy my day. Fighting wasn't the kind of thing that I enjoyed, but I grew to enjoy it because I did it so long.

I like entertainment. I'm an innate admirer of good entertainment. I'll listen to MTV, I'll listen to Mozart, I'll listen to anything that has a good element in it.

I'll never speak to another person without telling the truth. I've been a cruel man in my time, I've been a devious man in my time, like everybody else. I've told lies in my time. But I've seen enough suffering to experiment with the truth.

I'm a happy man because whatever I'm doing, I do for myself and I do a little creating here and there for others, and they work out very well.

I'm not interested in the ego trip of creating or not creating. I'm interested in selling a magazine. Rock-bottom, I sell magazines. I'm a thorough professional who does his job.

I'm not the sort of fellow who does the same thing all the time. I began using a lot of science fiction apparatus. I came out with the atom bomb two years before it was actually used because I read in the paper that a fellow named Nicola Tesla was working on the atom bomb.

I never duck out of a fight; I don't care what the hell the odds are, and I'm rough at times, but I try to be a decent guy all the time. That's the way I've always lived.

I never sued anybody, I never fought anybody or was in conflict or contention with any other party in a legal way. I feel that it hurts people, it hurts their families.

In the Army when we had judo classes, out of the class of 27 just me and another guy graduated. I grew to enjoy it because I knew I could do it well. I tried to do everything well.