Lynda Barry

“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?'”

“I do love to eavesdrop. It's inspirational, not only for subject matter but for actual dialogue, the way people talk.”

“Love will make a way out of no way.”

“Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.”

“My childhood is always going to limit me.”

“What is an idea made of? Of future, past and also meanwhile.”

“The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry.”

“You may be a lady but you are still the man!”

“'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.”

“For horror movies, color is reassuring because, at least in older films, it adds to the fakey-ness.”

“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.”

“Ask a burning question, get a burning answer”

“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.”

“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 look crazy. I know I do. Been true since I was a kid!”

“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.”