As an outsider, Superman had a unique view of the forces of good and e — Superman

"Villains are really what give comic stories their flavor. Honestly, I think Superman would be quite dull without a really great villain. Batman, maybe not so much, because hes such a twisted character himself. Hes struggling with a lot of inner demons. But Superman is the kind of guy whos impossible to hate, because hes a guys guy, and hes straightforward. He can be a little sarcastic and he has a wryness about him. But he doesnt have a lot of dark corners. So I think that contrasting him with someone like Darkseid, whos a real badass villain, absolutely makes the script more interesting."

"A man who can see across the planet and wring diamonds from its anthracite."

"Rather than Clark be this clownish suit that Superman puts on, were going to really see Clark come into his own in the next few years as far as being a guy who takes to the Internet and to the airwaves and starts speaking an unvarnished truth."

"I didnt bother getting into it with Tarantino about the Superman thing, because its not really true," chuckles Carradine. "Its not unique. The idea that Supermans analysis, whatever you want to call it, his image of the human race is Clark Kent, weak, a coward, fumbling, wearing glasses, uncertain of himself, not able to get a girl, all those kinds of things. Thats his idea about us and thats the point that Tarantino was trying to make. But the idea of Superman being unique in that he was born Superman, which is another point that Tarantinos trying to make, that thats what these people [Bill, etc.] are, these people are born warriors and they cant help it, but theres also the Silver Surfer, right? And theres Sub-Mariner..."

"Superman has always defended vulnerable communities and he’s always been political, says Joseph Darowski, a professor at Brigham Young University. Darowski is also a comic historian and the editor of “The Ages of Superman: Essays on the Man of Steel in Changing Times.” “It’s an inevitable part of the comic book industry that politics is going to seep in,” Darowski says. “There’s always some reflection of what’s going on on the world stage.” In the 1940s, Superman tried to stop World War II. He’s taken on corrupt politicians and got political during the Cold War, too. “As America gets engaged in the space race, suddenly Superman’s enemies are coming from the stars more frequently,” Darowski says. “Kryptonite and other forms of radiation creeps into the stories after the dropping of the atomic bomb. During the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, Kryptonite becomes much more commonly used in Super-man stories, and villains who get their power through radiation also become much more common. These geopolitical events end up being adapted in fantastic ways into the Superman comics.”"

"So Jerry and Joe plucked elements from the world around them to stir into their Superman stew. For the most part however, Superman’s millions of fans would ignore his origins. For them the Man of Steel would simply be the defender of the little man and woman-and a big problem for the forces of evil in the world."

"At one point a heated discussion arose over the possible interpretation of Lolita as a grandiose metaphor of the classic Europeans hopeless love for young, seductive, barbaric America. In his afterword to the novel Nabokov himself mentions this as the naive theory of one of the publishers who turned the book down. And although there cant be the slightest doubt that Nabokov did not mean to limit Lolita to that interpretation, there is no reason to exclude it as one of the novels many dimensions. The point, I felt, became obvious when one drew the line between Lolita as a delightfully frivolous story on the verge of pornography and Lolita as a literary masterpiece, the only convincing love story of our century."

"Lovely food, for rabbits, that is."

"One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved."

"[explaining to Ernie how April apologized to him] She just showed up at the factory, took off her coat, and begged me to take her. We made love in a way that Ive only ever seen in nature films."

"Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised."

"He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust — just uneasiness — nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a... a... faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him — why? Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served three terms of three years out there . . . Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself."