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Lynda Barry [1956-0] American

Rank: 101
Cartoonist

Lynda Barry is an American cartoonist and author.
Barry is best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek. She garnered attention with her 1988 illustrated novel The Good Times are Killing Me, about an interracial friendship between two young girls, which was made into a play.

Humor, Love, Inspirational, Poetry, Romantic, Teacher, Time

Quote	Tags	Rank
I do love to eavesdrop. It's inspirational, not only for subject matter but for actual dialogue, the way people talk.	Inspirational, Love	101
If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.	Love, Time	102
The strips are nearly effortless unless I am really emotionally upset, a wreck.		103
We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay.		104
Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.		105
'Good Times' is a story about the loss of innocence, how adults are responsible for their actions but children aren't.		106
Kids don't plan to play. They don't go: 'Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It's gonna be a three-act.'		107
Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet.		108
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.		109
I found myself compelled - like this weird, shameful compulsion - to draw cute animals.		110
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.	Teacher	111
I need to be cheered up a lot. I think funny people are people who need to be cheered up.		112
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.	Humor	113
Race and class are the easiest divisions. It's very stupid.		114
I used to live a very social life and never spend much solitary time looking at birds or reading.		115
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.		116
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.		117
I run a tight ship, but I try and make it seem like I'm not doing that at all.		118
I think of images as an immune system and a transit system.		119
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.		120
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!		121
The minute you understand racism, you're responsible for being racist. It's like eating from the tree of knowledge.		122
I am about as detailed as a shadow.		123
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.		124
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.		125
If I had had me for a student I would have thrown me out of class immediately.		126
I wasn't afraid to be laughed at or be loud.		201
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.		202
I go to work the minute I open my eyes.		203
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.		204
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.		205
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.		206
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.		207
Remember how you used to be able to feel your bed breathing and the walls spinning when you were a kid?		208
People think that whatever I put into strips has happened to me in my life.		209
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.		210
Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time.	Humor	211
In life there are always these things happening if you can just get the joke.		212
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?		213
Love will make a way out of no way.		214
I grew up in a house that had a whole lot of trouble. As much trouble as you could imagine.		215
My goal on my bucket list is to write a romantic comedy movie.	Romantic	216
Whenever I do a book, I'm usually guided by a question or something that I'm trying to tease out.		217
I live in constant fear of being fired or dropped for that dark part of my work I can't control.		218
The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry.	Poetry	219
I remember my comic strips being called 'new wave.' It bugged me.		220
I look crazy. I know I do. Been true since I was a kid!		221
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.		222
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.		223
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.		224
For horror movies, color is reassuring because, at least in older films, it adds to the fakey-ness.		225
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.		226
'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.		301
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!'		302
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?'		303
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.		304
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.		305
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.		306
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.		307
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.		308
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.		309
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.		310
My childhood is always going to limit me.		311
When you are little, you will draw pictures for no reason.		312

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