Top 20 Scott Snyder Quotes

I’m a difficult person, sometimes, to work with because I’m so intense about this stuff sometimes, and I get focused in ways that I think can be overwhelming for me and also the people I work with, where I’ll get so about every little bug in the thing, every little line.

I love everybody in Gotham. Gotham suits me really well. I’ll write anything from ‘Nightwing’ to ‘Batgirl’ and any of the villains.

My favorite Swamp Thing stories have always been about a man wrestling with monsters both internal and external.

People at Marvel and DC, we’re rooting for each other. And when we’re friends, like me and Jeff Lemire, or Charles Soule, or even Dan Slott – it doesn’t matter if you’re Marvel or DC. You’ll talk story with each other, and there’s like an agreement that you’re just helping each other out.

There’s an element of ego to writing the Riddler. You research a lot of things that you end up jettisoning as a writer, and Riddler was a lot of fun to get to have that sort of annoying know-it-all personality lording over the city. He’s a lot of fun to write about.

Monsters can be scary, and they’re great, but they’re only really scary when they’re reflections of us and they show you the things you’re scared of might be true about your own nature.

The secret to ‘Year One’ is that it’s a Jim Gordon story. It’s a great Bruce Wayne story, don’t get me wrong, but Jim Gordon is the focus of that book. To me, that’s the stronger emotional arc. It’s not that the Bruce Wayne stuff isn’t masterful, because it is, but it’s Jim’s book.

My favorite Batman stories were very much in conversation with the zeitgeist over the years.

The thing that really interests me is characters facing challenges that are emblematic of the things they are most frightened of about themselves.

In a post-9/11 world, ‘Batman’ is less about scaring bad people into the shadows than he is about bringing good people out into the light.

I’ve always been a relatively big history buff. In college, I took a lot of history courses, and when I was in grad school, I liked to audit them.

I remember when I was in school I had this teacher give me this E.L. Doctorow quote: They asked him how much historical research he does for his books and he said, ‘As little as possible.’ So I try and adhere to that.

I love what Brian Azzarello did with Wonder Woman.

The fun of superhero comics is finding ways to turn the pieces that you know so that they’re suddenly about things that you want them to be about, as long as they’re true to the core and true to the DNA of the mythology.

When I’ve gone through those periods of depression or anxiety, it’s almost like your body is telling you constantly with these panics that the world really is the terrible place that you think it is, and all the things you fear are true about yourself have to be true.

I like stories where people have to face some big demons internally. It always seems to be an element of horror, because it’s pretty scary to have to face yourself and the things you’re most worried about: your own abilities and your own capabilities and your own level of competence in being a hero.

One of my favorite books was ‘The Book of Immortality’ by Adam Leith Gollner, which talks about cheating death and life extension and frames with a story that David Copperfield finds a fountain of youth on an island he bought.

I grew up in New York City, so I have, like, an inherent fear of trees, I think, in general.

I feel like no matter what I’m on, whether it’s ‘Tiny Titans’ or ‘Swamp Thing’ or ‘American Vampire,’ there will be an element of horror in it. Which would be fun for ‘Tiny Titans.’

With ‘Batman,’ I actually had a really bad period when we started ‘Zero Year,’ right at the beginning, I just wasn’t taking care of myself at all. I was up too late all the time, I was working too hard. I wasn’t exercising.