237 Quotes by J. Michael Straczynski

You don’t buy into huge car chases or sensates or interstellar warfare, but you can buy into a loving relationship or a father-son relationship, and you can buy into the small humor. If you want to make your fiction universal, go small. That’s the best way to do it.

Accidents happen. That’s what everyone says. But in a quantum universe there are no such things as accidents, only possibilities and probabilities folded into existence by perception.

In every other science fiction series, humans are at the top of the food chain. In the ‘Babylon 5’ universe, they’re in the bottom third.

You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.

Wouldn’t it be much worse if life really were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us happen because we really deserve them?

There’s a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.

As kids, we spontaneously sing and dance and tell stories, and along the way, someone comes and says, ‘No. You shouldn’t be doing that.’ And we slowly begin to unlearn our passions. I think you have to hold on to those things.

I’ve made a decision and now I must face the consequences.

Coming from TV and film, rule number one is that you always service the main character first and foremost. If that’s not working, you’ve got nothing.