Quotes from Chris Claremont

My relationship with Marvel is that I work for them.

People would much rather argue their own visions and conceptions about a book than engage in a dialogue with the author, because the author could always trump you with, 'I wrote it.'

The key thing if you're a writer is to visualize the scene and convey it to the penciller and turn the penciller loose.

You have an iconic character in Superman. You want to keep him vital and relevant to the audience as it evolves. So there's a creative dynamic.

All things are possible, especially in the realm of superheroes.

The really nice thing with 'Future Past' is that you actually have a superhero film - much to everyone's surprise, I will hope - that is about something. It's about racism, I hope. It's about resisting oppression. It's about fighting for freedom and the cost of fighting for freedom.

If you think the X-Men are going to be push-overs, think again! Far better men than you have pledged their destruction ... yet the X-Men are still here.

Creative life should be more than preaching to the converted, more than going for a core audience of 100,000 people. It should be taking risks, challenging the readership and having enough faith in one's own talent and craft to take readers on that ride.

The weird thing for me is I'm sitting there in the '80s writing about the Mutant Control Act and here we are in the second decade of the 21st century with the Patriot Act, listening to presidential candidates talk about building walls to keep people out: who's acceptable and who isn't. It's very creepy.

The cool thing about comic books and prose is that if a reader gets confused on page 8, they can backtrack. With films, you sit down in a seat and once the projector starts going you're stuck for the next two hours. There are no do-overs, rewinding or starting again.

Comics publishers are used to looking in a very, very narrow focused prism. It's like when I started writing 'X-Men.' Our 'meat and potatoes' money was made of newsstand sales, while anything that came through the Direct Market was considered gravy.

What excites me, what attracts me, what gets me up in the morning is telling the next story and getting it out in front of readers and hoping they'll love it too.