When you are little, you will draw pictures for no reason.
— Lynda Barry
The happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad it's there. The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, your kingdom isn't dead.
Playing and fun are not the same thing, though when we grow up we may forget that and find ourselves mixing up playing with happiness. There can be a kind of amnesia about the seriousness of playing, especially when we played by ourselves.
'Good Times' is a story about the loss of innocence, how adults are responsible for their actions but children aren't.
It's not hard for me to be funny in front of people, but most of that is just horrified nerves taking the form of what makes people laugh, and afterwards I'd always feel dreadfully depressed, kind of self-induced bi-polar disorder.
The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock.
It's much easier to teach writing, because people are less shy about writing. If they're in a group, nobody can see what they're writing. When you're drawing, people get a little more nervous.
'What It Is' was based on this class I've been teaching for 10 years - I wanted to write a book about writing that didn't mention stuff like story structure, protagonists, and all those things that we know about only because they already exist in stories.
Kids don't plan to play. They don't go: 'Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It's gonna be a three-act.'
It's one thing to have a relationship, to lay your hands on it, and another to make it continue and last. That's something I haven't talked about much in my comic strips, and it's certainly something I'm interested in.
I look crazy. I know I do. Been true since I was a kid!
I live in constant fear of being fired or dropped for that dark part of my work I can't control.
Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet.
I grew up in a house that had a whole lot of trouble. As much trouble as you could imagine.
Going on Letterman is like going off the high dive. It's exhilarating, but after a while it wasn't the kind of thrill I enjoyed.
I've gotten a lot of livid letters about the awfulness of my work. I've never known what to make of it. Why do people bother to write if they hate what I do?
There was a beautiful time in the beginning when I just did it and didn't analyze the consequences, but I think that time ends in everyone's work.
We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay.
No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn't able to, though I wanted to... There were times when nothing played back. Writers call it 'writer's block.' For kids there are other names for that feeling, though kids don't usually know them.
I am about as detailed as a shadow.
When you think about it, giving up your 'real' personality is a small price to pay for the richness of 'living happily ever after' with an actual man!
My strips are not always funny, and they can be pretty grim at times, and I know I lose readers because of it, but I can't do anything about it - my work is very much connected to something I need to do in order to feel stable.
When I was working on 'Freddie,' I had been trying to write it on a computer for many, many years, but that delete button just won't let anything go forward.
When I work on a book, I usually start with a question. And I don't sit around and go 'I need to write a book. What's a good question?' It will be a question that's just clanging around in my head. So for 'What It Is,' it was this idea of 'What is an image?'
For 'Picture This,' I wanted it to be a drawing book that didn't have any instructions about drawing, beyond the real simple stuff you'd find like in a Bazooka bubblegum wrapper, or in 'Highlights' magazine. I just wanted it to be feelings about looking and seeing and pictures.
For horror movies, color is reassuring because, at least in older films, it adds to the fakey-ness.
I do love to eavesdrop. It's inspirational, not only for subject matter but for actual dialogue, the way people talk.
I remember my comic strips being called 'new wave.' It bugged me.
I found myself compelled - like this weird, shameful compulsion - to draw cute animals.
My goal on my bucket list is to write a romantic comedy movie.
Love will make a way out of no way.
I used to live a very social life and never spend much solitary time looking at birds or reading.
In life there are always these things happening if you can just get the joke.
People think that whatever I put into strips has happened to me in my life.
My childhood is always going to limit me.
I believe a kid who is playing is not alone. There is something brought alive during play, and this something, when played with, seems to play back.
The minute you understand racism, you're responsible for being racist. It's like eating from the tree of knowledge.
Remember when you were in school and the teacher would put a picture under an overhead projector so you could see it on the wall? God, I loved that. Tellya the truth, I used to look at that beam of light and think it was God.
I tried to be like the richer kids as much as I could because I wanted to live on their streets, at least hang out on their streets and eat their amazing food and walk barefoot on their shag carpets. I became something of a pest in that way, and in general, other people's parents didn't like me.
In my writing class, we never, ever talk about the writing - ever. We never address a story that's been read. I also won't let anyone look at the person who's reading. No eye contact; everybody has to draw a spiral. And I would like to do a drawing class where we could talk about anything except for the drawing. No one could even mention it.
When you learn about stories in school, you get it backward. You start to think 'Oh, the reason these things are in stories is because a book said I need to put these things in there.' You need a death, as my husband says, and you need a little sidekick with a saying like 'Skivel-dee-doo!'
I think of images as an immune system and a transit system.
Part of a horror movie has to be a bit fakey for me to really enjoy it. The new ones are so realistic that they distract me from the ride through the horror.
My mom didn't want me to go to college. She didn't want me to read - when I read, I may as well have been holding a pineapple.
The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry.
Whenever I do a book, I'm usually guided by a question or something that I'm trying to tease out.
I run a tight ship, but I try and make it seem like I'm not doing that at all.
I am not sure how much I would like being married if I wasn't married to him. A man who likes flea markets and isn't gay? I knew I was lucky.
Race and class are the easiest divisions. It's very stupid.
Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time.
