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I think there was a point in the past when I felt that my options as an artist were either to make race a nonissue and deny its impact on life and just say, Don't think of me as an Asian cartoonist. Just think of me as a cartoonist.

Adrian Tomine

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Adrian Tomine
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: May 31
Cartoonist
Comics Artist
Illustrator
Novelist
Sacramento
California
Life
Race
Point
Artist
Cartoonist
Felt
Options
Past
Asian
Make
Deny
Think
Impact
Thinking
Either

More quotes by Adrian Tomine

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I started publishing my comic while I was still living with my parents.
Adrian Tomine
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Maybe you're not even in a position to really judge how good your kid is at that endeavor.
Adrian Tomine
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I wanted all the responsibility to rest on the content of the story. I tried to make the visual style almost invisible.
Adrian Tomine
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I think, to its credit, this is one of the last forms of popular entertainment that I don't sense to be discriminatory in any way. I think there's this general hunger for greater diversity, where publishers are really excited about finding different voices than what has been done.
Adrian Tomine
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I was just a guy who did adult or alternative comic books. And then suddenly to be, like, a New Yorker cover artist was a different thing.
Adrian Tomine
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I certainly wasn't consciously hiding my identity in the earlier work, though a lot of people have brought up the fact that I drew myself without eyeballs.
Adrian Tomine
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I get the impression from some people that unless they get direct access to characters' thoughts and realizations, either through thought balloons or narrations or some sort of showy action, then those thoughts and realizations never existed.
Adrian Tomine
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I think there's a lot of evolution that's happened in intangible ways, in terms of how I think about the work or how I plan it out.
Adrian Tomine
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I think in terms of getting new artists who are not in that sort of stereotypical teenage boy demographic there's been a lot of progress recently. And I shouldn't make a definitive statement about this, but my impression is that the main impediment to progress in that regard is the number of people who are choosing to make a go of it.
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It's important to make a distinction between becoming more precise and becoming better.
Adrian Tomine
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For me, like, the more interesting a letter is I just get more excited and I know that this going to be great for my friends who are looking forward to reading that in my comic.
Adrian Tomine
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I think most cartoonists are solitary, lonely kids who use their work as a way to try to connect with the world. If I had any other skills that were more performative - if I could have been a musician or an actor - I'm sure I would have pursued that instead in order to get that instant feedback and to hear applause.
Adrian Tomine
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I think a lot of the criticism had to do with disliking the characters - which, again, I take as something of a compliment.
Adrian Tomine
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I think it's harder for each generation. Even I just feel completely separate from teenagers today who have access to the Internet. And I'm amazed that this interest in video games has never gone away. It just keeps growing.
Adrian Tomine
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I've always been really impressed with some of the longer graphic novels and thought it would be really amazing if one day I could try something like that.
Adrian Tomine
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That partially due to the world of media and commerce, the idea of a comic book has been lost in the ghetto, whereas the graphic novel is now being held up as something to aspire to and as something that's respectable for adults to read.
Adrian Tomine
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When people see me struggling on paper, I think it invites an almost collaborative relationship with the outside world, and that includes readers and other artists.
Adrian Tomine
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The experience of reading a comic should not be the time it takes to turn each page.
Adrian Tomine
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I do think it's getting more and more rare in this country to raise a kid with the attitude that creativity is something valuable. The idea of trying to make the effort to produce something, to put something out into the world, rather than just taking in all the stuff the world's putting out at you.
Adrian Tomine
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I'm getting to a point in my life where my whole attitude about the relationship between myself and the audience is totally different.
Adrian Tomine