Top 90 Jack Kirby Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 2

51. “I write from a people’s point of view. I love people because I understand them. I understand an enemy, I understand a friend, I understand grey areas, and I understand black areas.”

— Jack Kirby

52. “Ideas can never be traced to any one source. They are tossed back and forth between people until the decision makers step in and choose what they think is a success formula.”

— Jack Kirby

53. “I could do whatever I liked to do during the day. I didn’t have to work in an office. I could work at home. I could work at my leisure. I worked ’til four in the morning. I worked with the TV and radio on – it was a great setup. I was a night person and still am.”

— Jack Kirby

54. “I admired anybody who could make a buck with his drawing.”

— Jack Kirby

55. “I had to make a living. I was a married man. I had a wife. I had a home. I had children. I had to make a living. That’s the common pursuit of every man.”

— Jack Kirby

56. “I couldn’t draw anything that was too outlandish or too horrible. I never did that. What I did draw was something intriguing. There was something about this monster that you could live with. If you saw him you wouldn’t faint dead away.”

— Jack Kirby

57. “If you’re a thorough professional, and they won’t let you do a professional job, nobody’s going to benefit from it. The people who produce it won’t benefit. The people who buy it won’t benefit from it. They’re going to get a half-assed product.”

— Jack Kirby

58. “I wasn’t the kind of student that Pratt was looking for. They wanted patient people who would work on something forever. I didn’t want to work on any project forever. I intended to get things done.”

— Jack Kirby

59. “A character to me can’t be contrived. I don’t like to contrive characters. They have to have an element of truth.”

— Jack Kirby

60. “I don’t want to take somebody else’s beating. That makes me unhappy.”

— Jack Kirby

61. “A climb-out fight is where you climb a building. You climb fire escapes. You climb to the top of the building. You fight on the roof, and you fight all the way down again.”

— Jack Kirby

62. “I’m OMAC! Evacuate this section! I’m going to destroy it!”

— Jack Kirby

63. “I’m not the sort of fellow who does the same thing all the time. I began using a lot of science fiction apparatus. I came out with the atom bomb two years before it was actually used because I read in the paper that a fellow named Nicola Tesla was working on the atom bomb.”

— Jack Kirby

64. “The average politician was crooked. That was my ambition, to be a crooked politician. I’d see them in these restaurants, and they’d all hold these conferences. I’d see politicians who were supposed to be on opposite sides of issues all together at one table.”

— Jack Kirby

65. “There was violence because first of all, there were ethnic differences and names. If you were small, they called you a runt, and you had to do something about that even if there were five other guys.”

— Jack Kirby

66. “My monsters were lovable monsters. I gave them names – some were evil and some were good. They made sales, and that’s always been my prime object in comics.”

— Jack Kirby

67. “It’s funny how easy it is to point out other peoples mistakes and make our own mistakes seem insignificant.”

— Jack Kirby

68. “I was happy because I made enough money to give to my parents. I made enough money to get married on. I made enough money to enjoy myself a little more than I would have if I didn’t have enough money.”

— Jack Kirby

69. “When Superman came out it galvanized the entire industry. It’s just part of the American scene.”

— Jack Kirby

70. “There were very strict social conventions, and you adhered to it, and I think it gave you a lot of character. When a man said something, he meant it. He wasn’t kidding around. There were no jokes involved. Nobody was in the mood to joke unless you hit a guy with a baseball bat.”

— Jack Kirby

71. “Of course, mothers were very conventional, everything was very conventional. You had to have approval.”

— Jack Kirby

72. “An American is a guy, a rich guy with a family, a decent guy with a family with as many kids as he likes, doing what he wants, working with people that he likes, and enjoying himself to his very old age.”

— Jack Kirby

73. “I’d had a belly-full of being subservient. I had to find something else to do, and I did. I went to the animation houses. I went to new fields.”

— Jack Kirby

74. “I want to be better than five guys. I was that way when I used to box, I was that way in any sport. I want to compete with five other guys. If I beat five other guys, I’d like to see if I can beat six.”

— Jack Kirby

75. “Comics have a caste system – an editor has to act in a certain way, an artist has to be humble.”

— Jack Kirby

76. “I never sued anybody, I never fought anybody or was in conflict or contention with any other party in a legal way. I feel that it hurts people, it hurts their families.”

— Jack Kirby

77. “My parents were immigrants. And the place for all immigrants was the factories. They were the source of cheap labor.”

— Jack Kirby

78. “I came out of school one day, and there was this pulp magazine. It was a rainy day, and it was floating toward the sewer in the gutter. So I pick up this pulp magazine, and it’s Wonder Stories, and it’s got a rocket-ship on the cover, and I’d never seen a rocket-ship.”

— Jack Kirby

79. “My style is personal, my style of writing is personal, and I believe in that. I believe what comes out of me is an individual thing, and that’s why I, I believe in the individual.”

— Jack Kirby

80. “I draw people as I see them. I’m not involved in making artistic masterpieces. My, my object is to mirror people and I’ve always done that.”

— Jack Kirby

81. “My ambition was always to be a perfect picture of an American.”

— Jack Kirby

82. “You had to grow up sometime. The fellows who grew early, they were in jeopardy. They became the cops and the crooks, and the crooks became the gangsters. The crooks became the Al Capones.”

— Jack Kirby

83. “I’ve done my job extremely well. My only beef is that a lot of people have put their fingers in whatever I’ve done and tried to screw it up, and I’ve always resented that.”

— Jack Kirby

84. “I’m not interested in the ego trip of creating or not creating. I’m interested in selling a magazine. Rock-bottom, I sell magazines. I’m a thorough professional who does his job.”

— Jack Kirby

85. “In the Army when we had judo classes, out of the class of 27 just me and another guy graduated. I grew to enjoy it because I knew I could do it well. I tried to do everything well.”

— Jack Kirby

86. “If you’re drawing a Western town, you can duplicate that Western town from instinct alone. Some artists may take it from other illustrations or duplicate what you’ve drawn, but it will never have that gut reality that’s instinctive in the artist.”

— Jack Kirby

87. “Nobody ever asked me to do anything. Nobody knew what to do. When comics were brand new, nobody knew what kind of comics to make. So you were mostly on your own.”

— Jack Kirby

88. “I didn’t have an affinity for horror. But I knew that commercially it was viable.”

— Jack Kirby

89. “Everybody was wary. This was a time when communists marched through the streets, waving flags and shouting. The unions did the same thing so you began to associate them.”

— Jack Kirby

90. “I feel that every professional is the art school for the next guy. I feel that maybe a lot of the dynamism in my own work, having been felt by the rest of the artists, they’ll react to it and put elements of that in their own work, feeling that it’ll help it.”

— Jack Kirby

91. “All life on Earth is subject to the rumbles and rockings of the parent stucture which has no control over the disastrous effects of its stresses and strains on whatever thrives on its surface. The ambitions and dreams of men are irrelevant to this planetary giant which pursues its own way in its own manner. Man is its child, tenant and still, to this date, its captive.”

— Jack Kirby

92. “I would’ve liked to have been a better businessman when I was younger. And of course, I couldn’t, because it wasn’t part of my atmosphere. I never lived with accountants, I never lived with lawyers.”

— Jack Kirby

93. “I’m a guy who had to perform some way. I had to perform in some way. If not as an actor, I’d perform as an artist. It would have been something that would be outstanding in its own way.”

— Jack Kirby

94. “Every father was his own man. He did what he wanted. If your mother went shopping, your father never went with her.”

— Jack Kirby

95. “I didn’t save my money for a lawyer. I was a very young man, and saved my money for having a good time.”

— Jack Kirby

96. “I always enjoyed doing monster books. Monster books gave me the opportunity to draw things out of the ordinary. Monster books were a challenge – what kind of monster would fascinate people?”

— Jack Kirby

97. “The people who worked in comics were terrific guys. I had a good association with them, and I enjoyed comics for that very reason.”

— Jack Kirby

98. “I tried to, from my very early years, I’ve been an inveterate movie goer and still am and I, I love the medium. So what I, what I draw and what I’m still doing, is part of that particular orientation.”

— Jack Kirby

99. “Any kind of music can be written badly and it can be written wonderfully. I admire a top performer in any field.”

— Jack Kirby