superman

"KLTPZYXM...NOOOOOOOO!!!"

"Everyone, please proceed to the exits in an orderly fashion! There is more than enough time for us to--"

"You don't understand at all, do you? It may be a game to you, but not to me. Never to me."

"[Superman: We need to close the gap between our highest communist ideals and the cruel reality I saw today.] Then I urge you to try, but you'll quickly find that the only way to achieve that goal is to follow my example. The unpleasant truth, my son, is that certain people must die in order for the system to work."

"[Leo Quintum: Is that...?] A map of Superman's genetic code. I reverse-engineered it from his 24-hour super serum. I also finally figured out how to replicate it. [Leo Quintum: No...] Of course, it will require an ovum from a healthy human woman."

"Protect...the people... [Superman: It's why I'm here]"

"Doomsday...Is he...is he..."

"You won't kill me, and I won't stop until I kill you. [Superman: You're right. It's not how I'm programmed. But you should know...I've got a wildcard up my sleeve.] What?! What is this? [Eradicator: Eradication.]"

"Everything...go dark...hello, Superman...hello..."

"Get your mom to the overpass."

"Lady Lara, the Phantom prods are coming online."

"If you love these people so much, you can mourn for them! [uses heat vision, putting innocent people at risk of getting killed] [Superman: Don't do this! Stop! STO-O-O-OP!] Never."

"Who: Ro-Zar"

"Silencing me won't change anything. My son is twice the man you were, and he will finish what we started, I can promise you that."

"We've had a slight set-back."

"Mercy, phone my attorneys. All of them."

"A good death is its own reward."

"LexCorp was never there."

"Lady Lara, shouldn't you find refuge?"

"[General Zod: This Council has been disbanded.] On whose authority? [General Zod: Mine.]"

"We've had a child, Zod. A boy child. Krypton's first natural birth in centuries. And he will be free. Free to forge his own destiny."

"There is no refuge, Kelor. Jor-El was right, this is the end. Make a better world than ours, Kal."

"I have rights! I have nothing to say to you. [Dark Superman: How about goodbye?]"

"So that is what provides the son of Krypton with newfound power."

"Superman, a native of the fictional planet of “Krypton,” landed on Earth as an infant and some suggest that he would therefore be eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, DACA. President Trump recently announced that he would end the program, though he called on Congress to provide a new path for DACA holders."

"I think Superman's a loner. Without a doubt. I think he recognizes that he has this responsibility, because of the power that he has, and that he has to bear it by himself. And to make sure that he is using it for good and not for evil. He has to keep in check his human emotions, though he's not really a human – because those are the things about living on Earth that can get us in trouble. Greed, power, love -- all those things that take us off the tracks."

"None of us really have a choice. The warrior does not have a choice. It's pre-destined, you can't help it. Superman didn't... well, he did have a choice. You know, he could have been a bad guy. And the other thing about Superman that I don't think Quentin pointed out and that isn't part of this movie and maybe isn't part of Quentin, is that even though Superman sees us as weak jellyfish, he loves us. And he wants to take care of us. That's really the big essence of Superman. I prefer Batman. I like the meanness of him, the darkness of him."

"When Superman was created during the Great Depression, he was the champion of the oppressed and fought on the side of the working man. He was lawless. If you were a wife beater, he’d throw you out the window. If you were a corrupt congressman, he’d swing you from the rooftops until you confessed. I think it appealed to people who were losing their jobs to machines: Suddenly you had Superman wrecking machines and punching robots. But his popularity has declined—nobody wants to be the son of a farmer now. American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he’s too powerful; you can’t give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman’s relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it’s still a story about your relatives visiting."

"I think Superman likes Batman. In his own private way, he gets a kick out of the fact that he can count on Batman being cynical and pessimistic, and that he sort of relies on that probably in the way you rely on certain friends or family members to do certain things that you shake your head and go, “Oh, jeez.”"

"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 he's such a twisted character himself. He's struggling with a lot of inner demons. But Superman is the kind of guy who's impossible to hate, because he's a guy's guy, and he's straightforward. He can be a little sarcastic and he has a wryness about him. But he doesn't have a lot of dark corners. So I think that contrasting him with someone like Darkseid, who's a real badass villain, absolutely makes the script more interesting."

"The key word for me on him is "inspiration." He is a leader by inspiration. He sets an example. It's quite important that people realize that I don't see him as a glad-handing show-off, a one-man vigilante force who rights every wrong. Basically, he's a pacifist, a man who comes along and says, 'What can I do to help?' He stands on the sidelines until there is real trouble. He does not want to get involved unless it's absolutely necessary because he thinks people should learn to make their own decisions."

"I didn't bother getting into it with Tarantino about the Superman thing, because it's not really true," chuckles Carradine. "It's not unique. The idea that Superman's 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. That's his idea about us and that's 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 Tarantino's trying to make, that that's what these people [Bill, etc.] are, these people are born warriors and they can't help it, but there's also the Silver Surfer, right? And there's Sub-Mariner..."

"Well I know what I've been told You've to break free to break the mold But I can't do this all on my own No, I can't do this all on my own I know, that I'm no Superman."

"As an outsider, Superman had a unique view of the forces of good and evil shaping his new world. Although he gained a new identity and built a successful career in America, he isn't cele-brated for being an assimilated refugee; he’s beloved because he used his abilities to improve and protect the society that gave him refuge."

"If I go crazy then will you still Call me Superman If I’m alive and well, will you be There a-holding my hand I’ll keep you by my side With my superhuman might Kryptonite."

"Up, up, and away!"

"The 2 wishes behind Superman are certainly the soundest of all; they are, in fact, our national aspirations at the moment--to develop unbeatable national might, and to use this great power, when we get it, to protect innocent, peace-loving people from destructive, ruthless evil. You don’t think for a minute that it is wrong to imagine the fulfillment of those two aspirations for the United States of America do you? Then why do should it be wrong or harmful for children to imagine the same things for themselves, personally when they read ‘Superman’?"

"When I was little, I think that I wanted Superman to be my boyfriend. So this is the next best thing. I get to pretend to be Superman’s girlfriend. Although the older I’ve become, I’ve sort of decided that I would rather be Superman myself. So I’m trying (she snickers). But even my first memory of a super hero was of Superman, because I had a crush on him. Well, it was on Clark Kent, Superman and Christopher Reeve, all rolled into one."

"Superman is nothing more than a popular retelling of the Christ story, or Greek mythology. It's an archetype, watered down and made in vivid colors for twelve-year-old's mentality. It's pop mythology, which extends to the actor, then seeps over to a demand that that actor reflect the needs of the worshipers. The worship doesn't only go on in the temples — it goes on in the streets, and restaurants, in magazines. But, you know, I'm from New Jersey, I'm not from Olympus or Krypton, so back off 'cause I can't take the responsibility."

"The story would begin with you as a child on far-off planet Krypton. Like the others of that world, you had super-powers. The child’s scientist-father was mocked and denounced by the Science Council. They did not believe his claim that Krypton would soon explode from internal stresses. Convinced that his prediction was valid, the boy’s father had been constructing a model rocket ship. As the planet began to perish, the baby’s parents knew its end was close. There was not space enough for three people in the small model craft. They put the baby into it. The mother chose to remain on the doomed planet with the man she loved, and die with him. Tearfully, hoping that their baby boy would survive, they launched the craft toward the planet Earth. Shortly, Krypton exploded and its millions of inhabitants were destroyed."

"Superman has, despite the fact that he is a super-being, emotions just like everyone else. He's not a robot. If I were a super-being, I'd just be a human being with super-powers, which is the way I see Superman. He's a human being with super-powers and he can be lonely; he has emotions, he can be in love, he can hate people. He hates evil."

"A very young person can come up with an idea— well, Superman is the classic example, see? All these businessmen are at the top of the pyramid, but the entire pyramid is resting on two little stones, and the pyramid denies the existence of these stones because it’s so big. It’s loaded with officials, but the little stones are the ones that are holding it up because that’s where the support is coming from, and I was in the same position."

"Contrary to the rumours that you've heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-El, to save the planet Earth."

"What led me into creating Superman in the early thirties? … Hearing and reading of the oppression and slaughter of helpless, oppressed Jews in Nazi Germany … seeing movies depicting the horrors of privation suffered by the downtrodden … I had the great urge to help… help the downtrodden masses, somehow. How could I help them when I could barely help myself? Superman was the answer. ~ Jerry Siegel"

"Superman is invincible, and Superman is the first super-being to come into literary life. There he is alone. That's the way I see him. If I were a Superman among two billion people, despite the fact that I was a super-being, I'd feel pretty insecure. For instance, say I was a white hunter in Africa and I were to walk into a cannibal village. Despite the fact that I had a gun and they didn't, despite the fact that I had ammunition and they didn't, I'd feel pretty insecure, despite the fact that I could probably shoot my way out. Superman is alone in our world."

"Superman obeys the Talmudic injunction to do good for its own sake and heal the world where he can."

"Superman is arguably the most powerful person on the planet, but how long can he sit at his desk with someone breathing down his neck and treating him like the least important person in the world?"

"Rather than Clark be this clownish suit that Superman puts on, we're 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."

"[S]cholarship frequently appears to pay little attention to the tendency and credibility of sec-ondary sources that confirm their hypothesis. This is nowhere clearer or more troubling than in the instances where Nazi propaganda is cited by popular and academic writers as “recognition” of Superman’s “Jewish roots” and as “highlighting” his creators’ Jewish heritage (Weinstein 25–26; Tye 66; “Surnames”). Less dramatically, popular “Judeocentric” (Fingeroth 25) books are problematic only to the extent that they are uncritically used in academic work. The works of writers like Rabbi Simcha Weinstein, Danny Fingeroth, and Arie Kaplan are not tested for schol-arly rigor or quality and, most importantly, do not aspire to academic rigor. When these generic differences are ignored and they are cited as authoritative sources (e. g. Malcolm 159n18; Royal 1n2), parochial cultural myths can be disseminated into comics scholarship. With repetition, they can become naturalized, possibly muddling the historical record and making new insights into historical connections between comics and identity increasingly inaccessible."

"When Superman came out it galvanized the entire industry. It’s just part of the American scene. Superman is going to live forever. They’ll be reading Superman in the next century when you and I are gone. I felt in that respect I was doing the same thing. I wanted to be known. I wasn’t going to sell a comic that was going to die quickly."