Lynda Barry
Full Name: Lynda Jean Barry
Birthdate: January 2, 1956
Birthplace: Richland Center, Wisconsin, USA
Occupation: Author, Cartoonist, and Teacher
Profile: Best known for
Ernie Pook's Comeek.
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_byron
Number of Quotes: 83
At the center of everything we call the arts,
and children call play,
is something which seems somehow alive.
What It Is
But when the thing that is scaring you is already Jesus, who are you supposed to pray to?
Cruddy
Cartoonist was the weirdest name I finally let myself have. I would never say it. When I heard it I silently thought, what an awful word.
Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs.
Cruddy
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 the past 25 years, I’ve been a writer and artist for newspapers, which is a little like being a clown in a slaughterhouse.
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.
Good Times
is a story about the loss of innocence, how adults are responsible for their actions but children aren't.
Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time.
One! Hundred! Demons!
I am about as detailed as a shadow.
One! Hundred! Demons!
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.
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.
I believe there is something in these old forms that works in a way nothing else can.
I do dumb stuff, like playing my favorite dumb Barry White song
and lip-synching into the mirror so it looks like his voice is coming out of my mouth.
I do love to eavesdrop. It's inspirational, not only for subject matter but for actual dialogue, the way people talk.
I found myself compelled - like this weird, shameful compulsion - to draw cute animals.
I go to work the minute I open my eyes.
I grew up in a house that had a whole lot of trouble. As much trouble as you could imagine.
I listen like mad to any conversation taking place next to me just trying to hear why this is funny.
Women's restrooms are especially great. I wash my hands twice waiting for people to come in and start talking.
I live in constant fear of being fired or dropped for that dark part of my work I can't control.
I look crazy. I know I do. Been true since I was a kid!
I need to be cheered up a lot. I think funny people are people who need to be cheered up.
I remember my comic strips being called new wave.
It bugged me.
I run a tight ship, but I try and make it seem like I'm not doing that at all.
I started doing cartoons when I was about 21. I never thought I would be a cartoonist. It happened behind my back. I was always a painter and drawer.
I think of images as an immune system and a transit system.
What It Is
I think the arts are the place where the life of the soul is maintained and kept alive.
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.
I used to live a very social life and never spend much solitary time looking at birds or reading.
I was unable to sleep and I would stay up and draw these little cartoons. Then a friend showed them around. Before I knew it I was a cartoonist.
I wasn't afraid to be laughed at or be loud.
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?
If I didn't try to eavesdrop on every bus ride I take or look for the humor when I go for a walk, I would just be depressed all the time.
If I had had me for a student I would have thrown me out of class immediately.
If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.
One! Hundred! Demons!
Imagination is an actual place. It’s the place where you were before you were born and where you’ll go after you die.
In life there are always these things happening if you can just get the joke.
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.
In the digital age, don't forget to use your hands!
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.
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.
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.
Kids don't plan to play. They don't go: Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It's gonna be a three-act.
Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
One! Hundred! Demons!
Love will make a way out of no way.
One! Hundred! Demons!
My childhood is always going to limit me.
My goal on my bucket list is to write a romantic comedy movie.
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.
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.
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.
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.
People think that whatever I put into strips has happened to me in my life.
Play is what allows us to tolerate the unbearable.
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.
What It Is
Race and class are the easiest divisions. It's very stupid.
Remember how you used to be able to feel your bed breathing and the walls spinning when you were a kid?
One! Hundred! Demons!
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.
Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet.
The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.
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.
The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry.
The minute you understand racism, you're responsible for being racist. It's like eating from the tree of knowledge.
The ordinary is extraordinary. The ordinary is the thing we want back when someone we love dies.
What It Is
The past, present, and future are all in the same room when you're making something.
The strips are nearly effortless unless I am really emotionally upset, a wreck.
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.
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.
One! Hundred! Demons!
We don’t create a universe. We are part of its creation.
What is an idea made of? Of future, past and also meanwhile.
What It Is
What is an image? An image is a place. Not a picture of a place, but a place itself.
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.
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?
When I write, I don't think about the reader. I think about the monsters under my bed.
When you are little, you will draw pictures for no reason.
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!
When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere... but rather a way
of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again.
Syllabus
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!
Whenever I do a book, I'm usually guided by a question or something that I'm trying to tease out.
You can't know what a book is about until the very end. This is true of a book we're reading or writing.
Syllabus
You can't think yourself into an idea. You have to write yourself into it.
Last on Earth
