Lynda Barry
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
'Good Times' is a story about the loss of innocence, how adults are responsible for their actions but children aren't.
The minute you understand racism, you're responsible for being racist. It's like eating from the tree of knowledge.
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.
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.
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.
My childhood is always going to limit me.
When you are little, you will draw pictures for no reason.
No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible BE the unexpected.Collection: Business
When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere in terms of becoming an artist or becoming famous or whatever it is that people do, but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again.Collection: Art
At the center of everything we call 'the arts,' and children call 'play,' is something which seems somehow alive.Collection: Art
What year is it in your imagination?Collection: Years
You have to be willing to spend time making things for no known reason.Collection: Reason
The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away. I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.Collection: Baby
The point of the daily diary exercise is not to record what you already know about what happened to you in the last 24 hours. Instead, it’s an invitation to the back of your mind to come forward and reveal to you the perishable images about the day you didn’t notice you noticed at all.Collection: Exercise
are memories pictures or the secret doorway?Collection: Memories
Sometimes, I think the only art left for us is slowly peeling the label off a beer bottle while somebody tells you about a dream they had.Collection: Dream
When we finish a book, why do we hold it in both hands and gaze at it as if it were somehow alive?Collection: Book
Always watch the hands. The hands will tell you everything you need to know.Collection: Hands
If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.If you say "No! I don't want it right now," that's when you'll get it for sure. Love will make a way out of no way. Love is an exploding cigar which we willingly smoke.Collection: Love Is
When an attractive but ALOOF ("cool") man comes along, there are some of us who offer to shine his shoes with our underpants. There are thousands of scientific concepts as to why this is so, and yes, yes, it's very sick but none of this helps.Collection: Men
The only reason we find structure in stories is because it's there naturally in human interaction, and in the way that people tell stories.Collection: People
You keep seeing your picture on posters that you are missing but you're not. That'd be weird, right? Or say you look down at the sidewalk and earthworms are spelling your name. Or you open a peanut bag and the 'hello' is written in your writing on the inside of the shell. Would that weird ya?Collection: Writing
Then how can you ever know about the beautiful goodness of Mud? How bad it wants to be things. How bad it wants to get on your legs and arms and take your footprints and handprints and how bad it wants you to make it alive! Mud is always ready to play with you. Seriously you should try it!Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Book
As I enter the small intestine I get squeezed by muscles. Its dark and the walls look like slimey crushed velvet theres pancreas juice on me help me I am disintigrating.Collection: Wall
something can only become an illusion after disillusionment. before that, it is something real. what caused the disillusionment? no one told me the print on the wall was just ink and paper and had no life of its own. at some point the cat stopped blinking, and i stopped thinking it could.Collection: Wall
In health we're doing the digestive system. We each got assigned a topic for an oral report. I got the small intestine. I swear to god I hate my life.Collection: Hate
These are very confusing times. For the first time in history a woman is expected to combine: intelligence with a sharp hairdo, a raised consciousness with high heels, and an open, nonsexist relationship with a tan guy who has a great bod.Collection: High Heels
We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable.Collection: Believe
The histories of vampires and people are not so different, really. How many of us can honestly see our own reflection?Collection: Reflection
I remember my comic strips being called "new wave." It bugged me.Collection: Remember
You may be a lady but you are still the man!Collection: Men
The radio was on and that was the first time I heard that song, the one I hate. Whenever I hear it all I can think of is that very day riding in the front seat with Lucy leaning against me and the smell of Juicy Fruit making me want to throw up. How can a song do that? Be like a net that catches a whole entire day, even a day whose guts you hate? You hear it and all of a sudden everything comes hanging back in front of you, all tangled up in that music.Collection: Song
What is an idea made of? Of future, past and also meanwhile.Collection: Past
Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs.Collection: Drug
A man who has been dead for a week in a hot trailer looks more like a man than you would first expect.Collection: Men
If you can stand to wait 24 hours before you decide the fate of what you have written - either good or bad - you're more likely to see that invisible thing that is invisible for the first few days in any new writing. We just can't know what all is in a sentence until there are several sentences to follow it. Pages of writing need more pages in order to be known, chapters need more chapters.Collection: Writing
But when the thing that is scaring you is already Jesus, who are you supposed to pray to?Collection: Jesus
but paper and ink have conjuring abilities of their own. arrangements of lines and shapes, of letters and words on a series of pages make a world we can dwell and travel in.Collection: Ink
This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.Collection: Children
I found myself compelled, like this weird, shameful compulsion to draw cute animals.Collection: Cute
what is an imaginary friend? are there also imaginary enemies?Collection: Enemy
Flies die in so many lonely places. -Roberta RohbesonCollection: Lonely