Stan Lee was an American comic book writer, editor, publisher, and producer. Profoundly inspirational Stan Lee quotes will fire up your brain and encourage you to look at life differently while making you laugh.
If you’re searching for motivational quotes by authors that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes from Rudyard Kipling, powerful Ray Bradbury quotes and famous Paulo Coelho quotes.
Famous Stan Lee Quotes
I always felt that if I had super-power, I wouldn’t immediately run out to the store and buy a costume. – Stan Lee
I used to be embarrassed because I was just a comic-book writer while other people were building bridges or going on to medical careers. And then I began to realize: entertainment is one of the most important things in people’s lives. Without it they might go off the deep end. I feel that if you’re able to entertain people, you’re doing a good thing. – Stan Lee
I guess one person can make a difference. – Stan Lee
If you’re writing about a character, if he’s a powerful character, unless you give him vulnerability I don’t think he’ll be as interesting to the reader. – Stan Lee
Just because you have superpowers, that doesn’t mean your love life would be perfect. I don’t think superpowers automatically means there won’t be any personality problems, family problems or even money problems. I just tried to write characters who are human beings who also have superpowers. – Stan Lee
I do know that people enjoy reading a comic book and saving it and collecting the comics. And sharing them and trading them with friends. That may be something you can’t do as easily with digital comics. – Stan Lee
Usually, the biggest hang-up is the script. You could have a script done in six months that you love, or it could be like The Fantastic Four it’s been almost 10 years. – Stan Lee
I never tried to write for other people. I liked people who had problems I might have, because we all have insecurities, regrets. I like heroes who were not 100-percent perfect, who things to take care of. – Stan Lee
To me everything is fun. I’ve started Twittering or tweeting recently and that’s been fun. – Stan Lee
I remember when I was a kid, I loved Sherlock Holmes. I thought Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the greatest writers, because I felt I knew Sherlock Holmes. He existed to me. When I went to England the first thing I did was go to Baker Street to look for his house. I think you’ve got to try to make all of your characters as empathetic and realistic as possible. – Stan Lee
From 1940 to about 1960, I had been writing just regular comics, the way my publishers wanted me too. He didn’t want me to use words of more than two syllables if I could help it. He didn’t want me to waste time on worrying about good dialogue or characterization. Just give me a lot of action, lot of fight scenes. – Stan Lee
Comic books are just a way to show a story. Then there are the movies, and television and exhibits like this that take the stories and make them seem so realistic. In the comic book, you’re just reading a story – hopefully a good, exciting story that whets your appetite for all of this stuff to come. – Stan Lee
I thought it would be great to do superheroes that have the same kind of life problems that any reader – that anybody could have. – Stan Lee
I’m very proud of being a hack. It’s why I’ve lived as long as I have, I think. – Stan Lee
I think people are interested in anything that’s a little bigger than life and that’s colorful and – you know, what they like? They like fairy tales for grownups. – Stan Lee
To be honest, when I was writing these stories a million years ago, I never thought about movies at all one way or another. It would have seemed almost miraculous for these things to be movies someday. To me, they were just comic books that I hoped would sell so I could keep my job. – Stan Lee
I don’t know where the hell I’ll be in 5 years. Maybe I’ll be producing movies maybe I’ll be on a corner selling apples. I don’t know, but I’m having a hell of a lot of fun. – Stan Lee
I don’t really see a need to retire as long as I am having fun. – Stan Lee
I think superheroes are bigger than life and they’re very colorful. – Stan Lee
If there are people who like the work you’ve done, because of that, they like you and want your autograph and to take a photo, that’s really gratifying. You have to be appreciative. – Stan Lee
I’m afraid I go through the same thing all the time. – Stan Lee
I’m not a guy who gets inspirations. – Stan Lee
I’ve been very lucky. All I wanted was to pay the rent. Then these characters took off and suddenly there were Hulk coffee mugs and Iron Man lunchboxes and The Avengers sweatshirts everywhere. Money’s okay, but what I really like is working. – Stan Lee
You can’t kill a good comic book series. – Stan Lee
The more you read, the better you’re going to become as a storyteller. – Stan Lee
Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor. – Stan Lee
I’m lucky. I don’t have to produce the whole movie. What I’ve been doing is just coming up with ideas for movies. I write a concept, a treatment, an outline, and if I sell that to a studio, then someone else does the actual production and I go on to another project, although I keep the title executive producer. – Stan Lee
The power of prayer is still the greatest ever known in this endless eternal universe.-The Watcher in The Avengers #14 – Stan Lee
We’re living in a world where everything moves very quickly. We’ve become a very visual society, so I think it’s a very natural thing that people are captivated with the illustrations in a story. – Stan Lee
Superheroes? In New York? Give me a break! – Stan Lee
I always figure I’m not unique, and something that would please me hopefully would please a lot of other people that have the same tastes that I do. – Stan Lee
I hated teenagers in comics because they were always sidekicks. And I always felt if I were a superhero, there’s no way I’d pal around with some teenager, you know. – Stan Lee
I never thought that Spider-Man would become the world wide icon that he is. I just hoped the books would sell and I’d keep my job. – Stan Lee
It’s a tremendous challenge, because there have been so many characters created over the years. Every time you think you come up with a great name, you find out somebody has already done it. Dreaming up the stories isn’t that hard, but coming up with a good title is the toughest part. – Stan Lee
Quality. That’s the first word, the one word that comes to mind when I think of the books published by Abrams. In a world where so many companies are willing to cut corners, to do things the easy way in order to enhance the bottom line, it’s gratifying to know that there’s one company that obviously takes such pride in its finished product, one company that can always be counted on to design and produce a book that is, itself, as much a work of art as the illustrations on its pages. – Stan Lee
Comic books sort of follow with the move – if people see the movie and if they’re interested in the character and want to see more of the character, they start buying the comic books. So a good movie helps the sale of the comic books and the comic books help the movie and one hand washes the other. So, I don’t think there’s any reason to think that comics will die out. – Stan Lee
Negative information is that which, immediately upon acquiring, causes the recipient to know less than he did before. – Stan Lee
The comics of course, help the movies, because all of the comic fans want to see the movies. And the most amazing thing about it is these movies seem to appeal to young people, to old people, and to people all over the world. They’re as popular in China and Latin America as they are here. That’s really amazing and gratifying. – Stan Lee
If you’re going to write something, that’s going to be read by people, a lot of people, you hope it will not only entertain them but maybe do them some good in some way. – Stan Lee
Some people are able to not only entertain the public in any way that they can but also in some way to throw in some sort of inspirational message with the entertainment. I have always tried to do that with whatever I wrote. And I’m sure that a lot of other writers do, too. – Stan Lee
I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him. – Stan Lee
When you can sit down with a plain sheet of paper in front of you and make some notes, and, little by little, you see it take shape and become a concept for a movie or a TV show. That’s a real thrill. You watch it go from notes on a paper to a meeting with writers and directors and actors. I can’t think of anything that’s more exciting. – Stan Lee
These stories of people with unusual powers and unusual appearances, who do unusual things, people are always fascinated by them. – Stan Lee
The world has always been like a comic book world to me! What’s happened is that communications got better and better, so now with cell-phones we can be in touch with people half a globe away. – Stan Lee
Wives should be kissed – not heard. – Stan Lee
If I got a superpower I wouldn’t say, oh, I got to get a costume and put on a mask. I would say hey, I can do something better than other people. How can I turn it into a buck? – Stan Lee
Everybody learns differently and everybody gets to a certain point from a different direction. – Stan Lee
We all wish we had super powers. We all wish we could do more than we can do. – Stan Lee
With great power comes great responsibilty. – Stan Lee
Life is never completely without its challenges. – Stan Lee
No one has a perfect life. Everybody has something that he wishes was not the way it is. – Stan Lee
When you work with people whom you like and you admire because they’re so good at what they do, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s like you’re playing. – Stan Lee
I don’t think you ever outgrow your love for things that are bigger than life and more colorful than the average life. And somehow I feel that these comic book stories are like fairy tales for older people, because they have the same qualities. – Stan Lee
I have always tried to have a message, not to be a preacher, but a message that shows it’s better to be a good guy than a bad guy, and I try to make it clear that doing the right thing is more attractive than not. – Stan Lee
Achilles, without his heel, you wouldn’t even know his name today. – Stan Lee
If you are interested in what you do, that keeps you going! – Stan Lee
Comic books to me are fairy tales for grown-ups. – Stan Lee
Comics are stories; they’re like novels or anything else. So the first thing you have to do is become a good storyteller. – Stan Lee
Every day, there’s a new development. … There’s no limit to the things that are happening. – Stan Lee
I think people have always loved things that are bigger than life, things that are imaginative. – Stan Lee
I wanted them to be diverse. The whole underlying principle of the X-Men was to try to be an anti-bigotry story to show there’s good in every person. – Stan Lee
I’m no prophet, but I’m guessing that comic books will always be strong. I don’t think anything can really beat the pure fun and pleasure of holding a magazine in your hand, reading the story on paper, being able to roll it up and put it in your pocket, reread again later, show it to a friend, carry it with you, toss it on a shelf, collect them, have a lot of magazines lined up and read them again as a series. I think young people have always loved that. I think they always will. – Stan Lee
Your humans slaughter each other because of the color of your skin, or your faith or your plitics — or for no reason at all — too many of you hate as easily as you draw breath. – Magneto – Stan Lee
The only advice anybody can give is, if you wanna be a writer, keep writing. And read all you can, read everything. – Stan Lee
To my way of thinking, whether it’s a superhero movie or a romance or a comedy or whatever, the most important thing is you’ve got to care about the characters. You’ve got to understand the characters and you’ve got to be interested. If the characters are interesting, you’re half-way home. – Stan Lee
If you wanna be an artist carry sketch pad with you, and sketch everything you see. Get so you can draw anything and it looks like what it’s supposed to be. It’s a lot of work, but if you really have it in you, it’s not like work. It becomes fun. – Stan Lee
When writing, I model all the heroes after myself. Of course, it’s hard to make them quite as wonderful as I am, but I come as close as I can. – Stan Lee
While no one is expected to leap tall buildings in a single bound, our aspiring heroes will be tested on their courage, integrity, self-sacrifice, compassion and resourcefulness – the stuff of all true superheroes. – Stan Lee
Wolverine is one of the best characters ever created in fiction. I blew it by not coming up with the idea first. – Stan Lee
Very often, when people would write about us in the newspapers or the trades, they would say, ‘Stan Lee ? Creator of Spider-Man,’ and that would get Ditko angry ? but I had nothing to do with that! – Stan Lee
The results were very good, even if its net profit looks to have been inflated due to a decrease in tax expenses. – Stan Lee
Their income from asset management and investment banking should have continued to rise. – Stan Lee
I love Marvel and the people there. I’m glad I’m still part of it. – Stan Lee
I’ll probably be the next Donald Trump. Instead of saying, ‘You’re fired,’ I’ll have to come up with another line. Maybe, ‘Take off your costume!’ I’ll be the ultimate judge. It’s a great responsibility, and I take it very seriously. It’s a great weight on my shoulders and I just hope that I will be up to this test. Because the eyes of the world will be upon us. – Stan Lee
Howard the Duck … should have been good, but every mistake in the book was made with that movie, and it didn’t work. I didn’t want to butt-in… – Stan Lee
Comic books would probably be the last thing on the list of what we’ll do at this point. But wherever a comic book is warranted, we’re more than capable of doing them. – Stan Lee
So I’m happiest when I’m working with artists and writers, and involved in stories, whether we’re talking about animation or movies or comics or television. – Stan Lee
My biggest regret is that I don’t really have time to read. – Stan Lee
I have a reputation for doing superheroes, but I like all kinds of writing. In fact, hardly anybody knows this, but I’ve probably written as many humor stories as superhero stories. – Stan Lee
The thing to me that’s fun is trying to make the characters seem believable, or realistic. And it’s especially challenging when you’re doing fantasy stories, when you’re doing superhero types of things. – Stan Lee
No matter how good a story is, if you’re at a newsstand and you see a lot of comic books, you don’t know how good the story is unless you read it. But you can spot the artwork instantly, and you know whether you like the artwork, whether it grabs you or not. – Stan Lee
I like Silver Surfer because he’s the most philosophical, always philosophizing about the human race and the human condition and why people are the way they are, why they don’t appreciate this wonderful planet they live on… he has a nice moral tone. – Stan Lee
I like Spider-Man because he’s become the most famous. He’s the one who’s most like me – nothing ever turns out 100 percent OK; he’s got a lot of problems, and he does things wrong, and I can relate to that. – Stan Lee
Fans are almost always nice. I really find that they rarely come on too strong. – Stan Lee
I do conventions sometimes every other weekend. Whenever I have time, and it’s not too far away. I get a lot of invitations (to appear at conventions) in other countries and I have to turn them down. – Stan Lee
I suppose I have come to realize that entertainment is not easily dismissed. Beyond the meaning (of a work of art), it is important to people. Without it, lives can be dull. – Stan Lee
Singing a song, playing sports – anything that entertains, that takes people away from their own problems, is good. – Stan Lee
I never understood why people take drugs. They’re habit forming and they can kill you. I didn’t need anything to pep me up or make me feel more creative, and I didn’t need them to help me with women. – Stan Lee
In a sense, the artwork is the most important thing in getting somebody to buy a book. The person probably won’t buy a book if he doesn’t like the artwork. Once you buy it for the artwork, you hope that the story will also be good. – Stan Lee
I know the world expects me to have superpowers, and it’ll be quite a disappointment. But I just play myself. – Stan Lee
The public always loves anything that’s different, as long as it’s well-made, if it’s well-done. You never know what to expect when you go to one of these so-called superhero movies. – Stan Lee
I think there’s the element of the excitement of what I’m going to see, and with the special effects where you see men flying and walking through walls and shooting flame or whatever they do, especially the younger audiences, which make up a bulk of the moviegoers, they love that sort of thing. – Stan Lee
If you have superheroes or characters that exist in the same world, and you’re doing movies of them, wouldn’t it be fun to put a couple of them together in one movie? Audiences love that. It’s a natural thing to do that. – Stan Lee
I am so impressed with people who can really make a big movie, a good movie. The amount of work that goes into it is incredible. – Stan Lee
I have to force myself to get angry. But I want to show the world that there’s another side to me, that I am capable of deep, deep anger and fury. They better watch out for how I’m treated. – Stan Lee
When I was a kid, I loved reading Sherlock Holmes. Now, you don’t think of him as a superhero, but he was so damn much smarter than anybody else. – Stan Lee
Virtually every kid is exposed to giants and ogres and talking wolves, and so forth. And magic. And I think you never outgrow your love for those imaginative, fanciful, farfetched, fantastic characters and situations. – Stan Lee
To me, writing is fun. It doesn’t matter what you’re writing, as long as you can tell a story. – Stan Lee
I think if I were a superhero saving the world, I’d expect at least not to have to pay income taxes. I mean there should be something in it for a hero who risks his life to save mankind every day. – Stan Lee
I always sympathized with the people who did work for hire; I was one of them. – Stan Lee
The only time I go on the set is when I have a cameo to do in the picture. I go to the set and I do my little cameo and I meet all the people. It’s a great way to spend the day. And then I go back to my own world. – Stan Lee
I don’t sound disloyal, but I’ve never had a pair of Marvel pyjamas or underwear. I do have a lot of Marvel figurines at home in a cabinet. Every time they make a new Marvel figure I put it in my cabinet. – Stan Lee
I didn’t write ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.’ I’m not even sure who they all are. I can’t wait to see the movie. – Stan Lee
I’m as excited as a kid with a new toy to be able to create a unique, exciting, urban superhero for a magazine that I respect as much as VIBE. – Stan Lee
Wherever we find news, excitement, mystery and adventure, there, too, we find the newspaper reporter. Always on the alert for something new, ready to risk his very life for a scoop and finding adventure in every corner of the globe. – Stan Lee
Face front, true believers! – Stan Lee
People are pissed off about the seemingly impossible goal of social mobility. their proposed solution is to take the wheels off the cart. – Stan Lee
What the hell could you do? I’ve never been arrested, I haven’t taken drugs, I’ve had the same wife for 54 years where’s anything of interest to people? – Stan Lee
I always thought it was more interesting to think about Reed Richards. As you know, he had the ability to stretch, and sexually, that would seem to be a great asset in many areas. – Stan Lee
I have never had a lap dance in Tampa or any other part of Florida. If I ever did have a lap dance, I don’t think I would be discussing television ideas with the girl that was giving it to me. – Stan Lee
To tell you the truth, I never thought of myself as much of a success. – Stan Lee
When you combine the great stories from the comics with the action and visual excitement of the movies, it doesn’t get any better! – Stan Lee
Every kid loves fairy tales, stories of witches and giants and magicians. Then, when you get a little older you can’t read fairy tales anymore. – Stan Lee
“All I thought about when I wrote my stories was, “”I hope that these comic books would sell so I can keep my job and continue to pay the rent.”” Never in a million years could I have imagined that it would turn into what it has evolved into nowadays. Never.” – Stan Lee
I’m just working with ideas in my head and with drawings that the artists did. And suddenly to see these things come to life in movies – it’s just wonderful. – Stan Lee
I work with people and we come up with ideas for movies, television and things like that. It’s fun and I love doing it. – Stan Lee
I had a publisher who felt comics were just for little kiddies, so he never wanted me to use words of more than two syllables. – Stan Lee
A superhero’s catchphrase should be like a really memorable advertising slogan. It sticks in your head and you can’t stop humming it. And let’s face it, superheroes are just really selling themselves as products. – Stan Lee
In the beginning Marvel created the Bullpen and the Style. And the Bullpen was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the Artists. And the Spirit of Marvel said, Let there be The Fantasic Four. And there was The Fantasic Four. And Marvel saw The Fantasic Four. And it was good. – Stan Lee
Reading is very good. And you can quote me! – Stan Lee
You can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn’t want to see it on the stage? – Stan Lee
I had been writing comic books for years and I was doing them to please a publisher, who felt that comics are only read by very young children or stupid adults. And therefore, we have to keep the stories very simplistic. And that was the thing I hated. – Stan Lee
