To me, I was always just standing on the sidelines because up until issue 50, we were just doing Spawn. I wasn't recruiting anybody because I didn't have any books for people to work on.

That was my fear, which is why when I was took over a book, I was always trying to tweak it a little bit so that it looked like I was trying to add something instead of keeping the status quo.

I think people would actually be surprised by what we put out. Unfortunately the shadow that the original founders cast was that they were just artists that can't write books so people swept the whole of Image with that paintbrush.

I'm tired of trying to get other people to see into my brain. I'm done.

I guess The Grudge made over $100 million, but none of them had long legs after they came out but they all opened up and found an audience. If you could make those movies for a price, which is what I want to do with Spawn, then you could have some success.

Given that I have to share my computer with my three children, it's not usually a site that I get to spend that much time on. I'm usually on the Nickelodeon site, coloring with my little five year old or something.

You've got to let it go and say it was the best I could do at that time and place in my life. You hope that the thing you're doing next is a little bit better.

It can't really happen today the way it did back then and part of that is because I think there's a bit of a competitive scare over at Marvel and DC so they lock guys up with exclusive contracts.

The attempt is that we want to get a couple of minutes under our belt, depending on how good the tests are and take that into Hollywood. The fallback is we're going to DVD anyways. We've got that covered.

Here is a fear for me, I never wanted to be one of those guys that was defined by a body of work 20 years old.

I even knew some of the dialogue but it was definitely cool to look at. We always argue that the movies should be loyal but in this case I could argue that it might have been too loyal.

That became a big time in comic books because it's when people were starting to break out into independent stuff, the market was getting choked with speculators and everybody was trying to do their own trick covers.

The deal is that you can do it, you don't really owe me anything, but at the end of it, I own the film. Then I can actually go out and reprint or not reprint if it I want.

Image has to be its own fortress, in spite of the owners. People can't separate that or they don't comprehend that you can turn that on and off for each one of the different entities.

To me, I was always just standing on the sidelines because up until issue 50, we were just doing Spawn. I wasn't recruiting anybody because I didn't have any books for people to work on.

If I ever do anything, it actually might be some fantasy elf thing or even some cute, funny thing. Just to do something a little bit out of the ordinary. I've done my superhero gig.

A lot was happening, plus there were an enormous number of people in the industry that were going to conventions, so it was a pretty fun time. Also there was a lot of controversy and I was at the forefront of some of that.

Obviously Spawn was at the top of the charts at that point so you get a lot of opportunities.

Anthology shows as a whole scare people. The networks can't quite get their heads around it.

But again, I put in my time with Marvel and DC so there was that period of my life of trying to learn how to draw and tell stories in a proper fashion.

I'm a guy who likes to watch something cool, creepy and suspenseful and there is no show to watch as an adult that would scare me at for even four seconds.

I still do some inking here and there and I've actually got a book that I'm going to ink entirely.

I've been fortunate to come on places where the question isn't why did I do it? The question to me is always, why didn't anybody else do it before me? Those are the ones that I scratch my head about.

It works in the comic book, but as the audiences have gotten older and more sophisticated, I think the stories need to grow up with them. This is a story about a couple of rival gangs and what goes wrong in a couple of days.

Image has to be its own fortress in spite of the owners. People cant separate that or they dont comprehend that you can turn that on and off for each one of the different entities.

There were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

I was drawn to boxing because I got beat up as a kid. I was the kid with the piano books in a New York neighbourhood.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

The proper study of mankind is books.

I have written about 10 books, all just practical encouragement for moms.

Whites were the winners, blacks were the losers, we wrote the history books, and they didn't feature.

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.

You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist.

As I have studied the Bible and the Book of Mormon, I have come to know through the power of the Spirit of God, that these books contain the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books.

Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Well, it was actually - I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000, when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out.

In my subconscious, my books were part of a single emotional journey.

I get letters from readers who say that they have always hated reading, but somebody suggested one of my books, they actually finished the book and enjoyed it, and they're going on to read another book. I'm thrilled that they have figured out that reading is fun.

I never buy magazines, I never even buy books.

Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

Well see, I'm a good enough writer that not everybody in my books talks exactly like I do.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.