Life & Wisdom Quote by Garth Ennis

A working writer admitting, with a little shrug, that art and labor aren’t the same thing. Ennis frames “that kind of work” as both a credential and a compromise: the early-career calculus where you take assignments less because you love them than because they prove you can deliver on deadline, hit the genre beats, and keep a readership. The phrasing is tellingly cautious - not “sellout,” not “hackwork,” just “that kind,” a euphemism that lets the industry reality sit in the room without being named.

The pivot is the real flex: “I don’t really need to.” It’s not arrogance so much as a status update in the only currency comics and genre publishing consistently reward: reliability plus an unmistakable voice. Ennis has spent decades building a brand of confrontational masculinity, gallows humor, and anti-authoritarian disgust; once an audience will follow you there, you stop auditioning. You start curating.

“I could pick and choose” signals creative autonomy, but it also exposes a quiet anxiety: choice is a privilege that risks calcifying into comfort. Writers who no longer “need to” can become indulgent, repeating the safest version of their own persona. Ennis’s subtext is an argument for leverage - you do the proving work so you can later refuse it. In an industry where franchises and editors often steer the ship, this is the dream and the warning: freedom arrives not as pure inspiration, but as negotiating power earned through years of being useful.