Fandom Quotes

“There's a time and place for everything, and I believe it’s called 'fan fiction'.”
― Joss Whedon

“There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.”
― Margaret Atwood , Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

“Never give up on your dreams, and never let anyone tell you that what you love is inconsequential or useless or a waste of time. Because if you love it? If that OTP or children's card game or abridged series or YA book or animated series makes you happy?
That is never a waste of time. Because in the end we're all just a bunch of weirdos standing in front of other weirdos, asking for their username.”
― Ashley Poston, Geekerella

“You don’t have any friends, your sister dumped you, you’re a freak eater..and you’ve got some weird thing about Simon Snow."

"I object to every single thing you just said."

Reagan chewed. And frowned. She was wearing dark red lipstick.

"I have lots of friends," Cath said.

"I never see them."

"I just got here. Most of my friends went to other schools. Or they’re online."

"Internet friends don’t count."

"Why not?"

Reagan shrugged disdainfully.

"And I don’t have a weird thing with Simon Snow," Cath said. "I’m just really active in the fandom."

"What the fuck is ‘the fandom’?”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“I'm just really active in the fandom."
"What the fuck is 'the fandom'?”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“Will grinned. “Some of these books are dangerous,” he said. “It’s wise to be careful.”“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”“I’m not sure a book has ever changed me,” said Will. “Well, there is one volume that promises to teach one how to turn oneself into an entire flock of sheep—”“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry,” said Tessa”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“I adore the way fan fiction writers engage with and critique source texts, by manipulating them and breaking their rules. Some of it is straight-up homage, but a lot of [fan fiction] is really aggressive towards the source text. One tends to think of it as written by total fanboys and fangirls as a kind of worshipful act, but a lot of times you’ll read these stories and it’ll be like ‘What if Star Trek had an openly gay character on the bridge?’ And of course the point is that they don’t, and they wouldn’t, because they don’t have the balls, or they are beholden to their advertisers, or whatever. There’s a powerful critique, almost punk-like anger, being expressed there—which I find fascinating and interesting and cool.”
― Lev Grossman

“We're like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.”
― Jerry Garcia

“You know," he said, "I keep wanting to say that it's like Simon Snow threw up in here... but it's more like someone else ate Simon Snow—like somebody went to an all-you-care-to-eat Simon Snow buffet—and then threw up in here.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“Fandom, after all, is born of a balance between fascination and frustration: if media content didn't fascinate us, there would be no desire to engage with it; but if it didn't frustrate us on some level, there would be no drive to rewrite or remake it.”
― Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

“And the thing about nerd culture being mainstream culture now means that there's no place to just be a nerd among other nerds - without being reminded that you're the nerd.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Kindred Spirits

“Everybody drinks," she said calmly. The Only Rational One.
"Your sister doesn't."
When rolled her eyes. "Forgive me, but I'm not going to spend my college years sitting soberly in my dorm room, writing about gay magicians."
"Objection," Cath said, reaching for a burrito.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“When people say the word "convention," they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity to flirt with strangers, drink, and otherwise indulge themselves. The first major difference between a business convention and a fan-dom convention is that fandom doesn’t bother with the pretenses. They’re just there to have a good time. The second difference is the dress code— the ensembles at a fan convention tend to be considerably more novel.”
― Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty

“Fandom is less like being in love than like being in love with love.”
― Michael Joseph-Gross

“You can't be like pop stars, but you can be part of their story. You can be their fan.”
― Simon Cheshire, Plastic Fantastic

“My only companion from the outside world during nineteen years of isolation has been my personal hatred of Thursday Next. It's kind of like the old me suddenly taking over, and I promised myself that this was how I would act if I ever saw you.'
'I have the same thing, but with Tom Stoppard,' I said.
'You'd kill Tom Stoppard?'
'Not at all. I promised myself many years ago that I would throw myself at his feet and scream "I'm not worthy!" if I ever met him, so now if we're ever at the same party or something, I have to be at pains to avoid him. It would be undignified, you see—for him and for me.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Woman Who Died A Lot

“She definitely wasn't what I thought she was.'

'She wasn't a maniacal fan, you mean?'

'She was a maniacal fan, but I don't think the maniacal fans are what I thought they were. Well, not all of them, anyway.'

'They're just a bit normal, really,' I say.

'Or we're all weird.'

'You can say that again.”
― Alice Oseman, I Was Born for This

“being a fan isn’t always about the thing you’re a fan of. okay, well it sort of is, but there is so much more to it than just going online and screaming that you love something. being a fan has given me people to talk to about the things that i like for the last five years. being a fan has made me better friends online than i’ve ever encountered in real life; it has entered me into a community where people are joined in love and passion and hope and joy and escape. being a fan has given me a reason to wake up, something always to look forward to, something to dream about while i’m trying to fall asleep”
― Alice Oseman, I Was Born for This

“Idol groups generally assigned each member an official color, which would be used for the light sticks that fans would hold up to show your support at a performance or for other individual merch. My oshi's was blue, so I systematically surrounded myself with everything blue. Just being in a blue space made me feel calm.”
― Rin Usami, Idol, Burning

“The extraordinary thing is this: that the moment you make a story or create an image that finds favour with an audience, you’ve effectively lost it. It toddles off, the little bastard; it becomes the property of the fans. It’s they who create around it their own mythologies; who make sequels and prequels in their imagination; who point out the inconsistencies in your plotting. I can envisage no greater compliment. What more could a writer or a film maker ever ask, than that their fiction be embraced and become part of the dream-lives of people who it’s likely he’ll never meet?”
― Clive Barker, Clive Barker's Hellraiser Vol. 1

“This book is dedicated to everyone who has ever loved a story so much they could quote it.

There's nothing in the world quite like being part of a fandom. Never let anyone shame you for it. Read those books. Watch those movies. Binge those TV shows. Love those characters. Admire those celebrities. Write that fan-fiction. Draw that fan art. Go to those conventions. Sing that (on-hiatus, totally-not-broken-up) boy band at the top or your lungs. Do what makes you happy.”
― J.M. Darhower, Ghosted

“Wanted's lead was Wesley Gibson, drawn by J.G. Jones to resemble handsome rapper Eminem with an eye on the movie potential, but who stood for every shy, overweight, underweight, misunderstood kid reveling in the power to trash, denigrate, and insult his imagined enemies - who were just about everybody, especially the creators of the comic books, music, games, and movies that brought to these miserable lives the only meaning they would ever know. Geek royalty. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Wesley acted out the new porn-fueled fantasies of dumping the fat girlfriend, hooking up with the hot sex-mad assassin chicks, raping pretty newsreaders, and Getting Away with It All. At its best, reminiscent of the cool, amused cruelty of a Joe Orton play, the bludgeoning effect of Wanted's uneasy satire exposed the horrible truth: The fragile, asocial, and different really just wanted to do coke, fuck bimbos, and bully people. The revolution had arrived.”
― Grant Morrison, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human

“You can think about Robin Hood as a classic poacher, who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. And, essentially, what I see taking place in fandom is that process, where we steal the cultural resources that belong to the networks and we remake them, to speak to what we as fans want them to be, be they concerns as women, or racial concerns, sexual politics questions or whatever. That‘s what I think happens most of the time, when people are engaged in fan writing, in one way or another.”
― Henry Jenkins

“The music I was listening to on that particular day outside Small World triggered me and I got this insane influx of what I guess was dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and other neurochemicals that just made me feel so good. I think we call it fandom, and it’s a very addictive drug once you get it in the bloodstream.”
― Pete Trainor, Electrasy: Calling All The Dreamers

“We don’t understand, Fereshteh. Help us understand.’‘You ... can’t.’They can’t understand. Some things are impossible to explain.”
― Alice Oseman, I Was Born for This

“There's a lot of pious Roman Catholic iconography in the movie, although no one except the beloved executed priest ever goes into a church for purposes other than being murdered. The lads are loyal to the church in the same way fans are loyal to Da Bears. They aren't players themselves, but it's their team and don't mess with it.”
― Roger Ebert, A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length: More Movies That Suck

“As fans continue to gather both on- and offline, it’s important for us to remember what brings us together — the evolving and shifting story, where there is something for everyone to love and which we love in our own ways.”
― Talia Franks, Adventures Across Space and Time: A Doctor Who Reader

“The show is meant to encompass the universe and has infinite potential, so why should it be focused around representing only certain kinds of people? The show has made increasing efforts towards diversity and inclusion and making fans feel seen, but so much work is yet to be done.”
― Talia Franks, Adventures Across Space and Time: A Doctor Who Reader

“Sometimes fans needed to be caged, for the good of everyone.”
― Goldy Moldavsky, Kill the Boy Band

“Whoever says TV isn't worthwhile isn't watching the right shows.”
― K.A. Applegate, The Journey