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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.

Lynda Barry

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Lynda Barry
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: January 2
Cartoonist
Comics Artist
University Teacher
Good
Head
Start
Write
Around
Book
Need
Clanging
Writing
Usually
Work
Question

More quotes by Lynda Barry

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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?
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At the center of everything we call 'the arts,' and children call 'play,' is something which seems somehow alive.
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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.
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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.
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If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.
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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.
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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.
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You can't know what a book is about until the very end. This is true of a book we're reading or writing.
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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.
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I live in constant fear of being fired or dropped for that dark part of my work I can't control.
Lynda Barry
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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!
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I need to be cheered up a lot. I think funny people are people who need to be cheered up.
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We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay.
Lynda Barry
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You'll never call him Fifi again.
Lynda Barry
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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.
Lynda Barry
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I wasn't afraid to be laughed at or be loud.
Lynda Barry
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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.
Lynda Barry
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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.
Lynda Barry
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For horror movies, color is reassuring because, at least in older films, it adds to the fakey-ness.
Lynda Barry
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gospel singing ... is the rawest, sweetest, uninhibited and exquisite sounds a person can make or hear. It isn't music, it's an entire experience you feel and live. A sound to rise you up again.
Lynda Barry