Daniel Clowes
I was a very fearful little kid, and I would always see the worst in everything. The glass was half-empty. I would see people kissing, and I would think one was trying to bite the other.Collection: Fear
Yeah, I don't necessarily like endings that contrive an artificial moment of completion.
I have this certain vision of the way I want my comics to look; this sort of photographic realism, but with a certain abstraction that comics can give. It's kind of a fine line.
I must have been 3 years old or less, and I remember paging through these comics, trying to figure out the stories. I couldn't read the words, so I made up my own stories.
You can give some kind of spark of life to a comic that a photograph doesn't really have. A photograph, even if it's connecting with you, it seems very dead on the page sometimes.
When you see somebody who's got a complaining personality, it usually means that they had some vision of what things could be, and they're constantly disappointed by that. I think that would be the camp that I would fall into - constantly horrified by the things people do.
It's embarrassing to be involved in the same business as the mainstream comic thing. It's still very embarrassing to tell other adults that I draw comic books - their instant, preconceived notions of what that means.
I love the medium and I love individual comics, but the business is nothing I would be proud of.
I don't read much of anything online.
I'm not opposed to comics on the Internet. It's just not interesting to me.
I'm a fan of parchment and wood pulp.
Working on movies made me realize how fluid the medium of film was.
For example, I noticed that every single kid in the high school in 'The Death-Ray' is based on somebody I went to high school with.
I think I've had the fantasy of a ray-gun that could erase the world from the time I was a very little kid.
I think that's what we're all most terrified about: that we'll just die and disappear and we'll leave no trace.
That's the biggest part of doing comics: You have to create stuff that makes you want to get out of bed every morning and get to work.
People seem to need a likable protagonist more than ever.
I'm more interested in characters who are a little difficult.
I had no television when I was little, just a stack of old, beat-up comics from the 1950s and 1960s.
I was 30 before I made a living that was not embarrassing.
For me, the whole process involves envisioning this book in my head as I'm working.
Even if I only had 10 readers, I'd rather do the book for them than for a million readers online.
I originally just wanted to be an artist.
Superman's always chasing after someone who just mugged somebody, and I've never seen that happen in my life.
That'll be my claim to fame: My grandmother-in-law is the oldest iPad user!
When I close my eyes to draw I always think Chicago in 1975.
But I enjoy the opportunity to use swear symbols.
When people get things for free, they tend to not take them as seriously.
I never feel there's anything I can't do.
Comics seldom move me the way I would be moved by a novel or movie.
I tend to be the type who is overly polite and sort of ingratiating to other people.
Nobody else feels the same way about your dog that you do.
I try personally not to be nostalgic.
In an art school it's very hard to tell who is the best.
In a movie, you have to be mindful that no budget is going to be able to deal with running around the globe at every whim of the writer.
I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book publishing.
Try letting a Kindle protect your heart from sniper fire!
You try to make the world a better place and what does it get you? I mean, Christ, how the hell does one man stand a chance against four billion assholes?Collection: Mean
In some ways, I never outgrew my adolescence. I wake up in the morning and think, 'Oh my God, I'm late for a math test!' But then I say, 'Wait a minute. I'm 40.Collection: Morning
I have a very low tolerance for animation. I'm used to the perfect integrity you get from drawing your own comics. There's something about that that animation always loses.Collection: Integrity
For me, the whole process involves envisioning this Ghost World comic book in my head as I'm working.Collection: Book
The secret to being alone is to organize your time; to develop habits and routines and gradually elevate their importance to where they seem almost like normal, healthy activities.Collection: Healthy
Everybody just lets the media do their thinking for them... that's why you'll never hear any reggae on the radio!Collection: Thinking
I try to employ a different strategy for each story. Often, I'll have a specific look in mind before I even have the story to go with it. I'm not so much interested in forcing the issue of reader identification through various graphic tricks. I'm more interested in creating specific characters that resonate with my own particular inner struggles.Collection: Struggle
I never feel there's anything I can't do with comics. There are certain things in comics that you can't do in any other medium: for instance, in Mister Wonderful, Marshall's narration overlaps the events as they're going on. That would be difficult in film; you could blot speech out with a voiceover, but it wouldn't have the same effect. That's always of interest, to see what new things you can do in comics form.Collection: Wonderful
I never know if a book is crazy or not. There's that fear - this is the one that will end it all.Collection: Crazy
That's been my main interest for the last 15 years, is to really make sure the story and the characters take precedence over everything else, and that I give them everything I can to make them exist as actual people.Collection: Character
I try to only work on the screenplays for a few hours a day when I'm in my most voluble mood, just sort of writing whatever comes into my head. It's a very freeing thing.Collection: Writing
At a certain point, I realized that I could draw anything, and there was nothing I should avoid - I could make it work. That's opened me up to being able to be much more comfortable telling any kind of story.Collection: Stories
Face it, you hate every single boy on the face of the Earth!" "That's not TRUE, I just hate all these obnoxious, extroverted, pseudo-bohemian art-school losersCollection: Art