Lynda Barry Quotes & Sayings

Whenever I do a book, I'm usually guided by a question or something that I'm trying to tease out. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma. — Lynda Barry

We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. — Lynda Barry

My childhood is always going to limit me. — Lynda Barry

I am about as detailed as a shadow. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

I found myself compelled - like this weird, shameful compulsion - to draw cute animals. — Lynda Barry

You'll never call him Fifi again. — Lynda Barry

The minute you understand racism, you're responsible for being racist. It's like eating from the tree of knowledge. — Lynda Barry

Ask a burning question, get a burning answer — Lynda Barry

Same circus, different clowns, and without a doubt I'm one of them. — Lynda Barry

I remember my comic strips being called 'new wave.' It bugged me. — Lynda Barry

My goal on my bucket list is to write a romantic comedy movie. — Lynda Barry

One by one most kids I knew quit drawing and never drew again. It left behind too much evidence. — Lynda Barry

I didn't know there were different lines of aliveness, and two worlds contained by each other. — Lynda Barry

When you are little, you will draw pictures for no reason. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

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!' — Lynda Barry

If I could only turn the etch-a-sketch of my life upside down. — Lynda Barry

Once i knew the blinking cat could not really blink, was just paper and ink. — Lynda Barry

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

Mr. Harmong is the cheapest chinztiest most pig-lipped tightwad skanked-out lardo king landlord of all time. — Lynda Barry

But paper and ink have conjuring abilities of their own. arrangements of lines and shapes, of letters and words on a series of pages make a world we can dwell and travel in. — Lynda Barry

What if she stepped on a needle and it went right into her foot and Roberta would not feel it and the needle would rise and rise and rise through the veins leading up to the heart and then the needle would STAB HER IN THE HEART and Roberta would DIE and it would be VERY PAINFUL this according to nurse mother a medical expert on Freaky Ways to Croak ... The mother shouted that she knew several people who died from the Rising Stab of the Unfelt Needle or RSUN she has seen cases of it many times and not ONE PERSON HAS SURVIVED IT. — Lynda Barry

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

Kids don't plan to play. They don't go: 'Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It's gonna be a three-act.' — Lynda Barry

Race and class are the easiest divisions. It's very stupid. — Lynda Barry

I grew up in a house that had a whole lot of trouble. As much trouble as you could imagine. — Lynda Barry

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

I live in constant fear of being fired or dropped for that dark part of my work I can't control. — Lynda Barry

You may be a lady but your are still the man! — Lynda Barry

At the center of everything we call 'the arts,' and children call 'play,' is something which seems somehow alive. — Lynda Barry

No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible BE the unexpected. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away.
I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all. — Lynda Barry

And I could tell she loved him. And although she was an evil fungus growing on 200 pounds of irritated lard, her feelings were real. — Lynda Barry

'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. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

By the 6th grade I stopped doing ordinary things in front of people. It had been ordinary to sing, kids are singing all the time when they are little, but then something happens. It's not that we stop singing. I still sang. I just made sure I was alone when I did it. And I made sure I never did it accidentally. That thing we call 'bursting into song.' I believe this happens to most of us. We are still singing, but secretly and all alone. — Lynda Barry

Love will make a way out of no way. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

Some lights shine without any flashing. Others flash on and off. — Lynda Barry

Maybonne said "Just because someone has lace-up hip huggers does not mean they can control the world". Then Magreet let her wear those pants. When my aunt saw them on her she shouted "Are you trying to kill me?! — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere in terms of becoming an artist or becoming famous or whatever it is that people do, but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

You can't know what a book is about until the very end. This is true of a book we're reading or writing. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

Sometimes, I think the only art left for us is slowly peeling the label off a beer bottle while somebody tells you about a dream they had. — Lynda Barry

The histories of vampires and people are not so different, really. How many of us can honestly see our own reflection? — 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?' — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

I kept trying to find a way to turn myself so that I couldn't see the telephone poles or be in the path of father's breath. I was feeling dizzy and then very sick and the father was shouting, 'WHAT THE
GO TO THE HEAD, DO IT IN THE HEAD! DON'T PUKE ON ME, CLYDE! CLYDE!'
I never did finish my letter to Jesus. I tried for a while but I couldn't think of anything else to say besides, Have a Good Summer and Stay Crazy. — Lynda Barry

If you can stand to wait 24 hours before you decide the fate of what you have written - either good or bad - you're more likely to see that invisible thing that is invisible for the first few days in any new writing. We just can't know what all is in a sentence until there are several sentences to follow it. Pages of writing need more pages in order to be known, chapters need more chapters. — Lynda Barry

What year is it in your imagination? — Lynda Barry

You may be a lady but you are still the man! — Lynda Barry

The strips are nearly effortless unless I am really emotionally upset, a wreck. — Lynda Barry

The radio was on and that was the first time I heard that song, the one I hate. Whenever I hear it all I can think of is that very day riding in the front seat with Lucy leaning against me and the smell of Juicy Fruit making me want to throw up. How can a song do that? Be like a net that catches a whole entire day, even a day whose guts you hate? You hear it and all of a sudden everything comes hanging back in front of you, all tangled up in that music. — Lynda Barry

There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way that crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together you get a fairytale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it.
I believe there is something in these old stories that does what singing does to words. They have transformational capabilities, in the way melody can transform mood.
They can't transform your actual situation, but they can transform your experience of it. We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable. — Lynda Barry

I go to work the minute I open my eyes. — Lynda Barry

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

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. — Lynda Barry

Dear Blubbo, How is it going? It is fine here. My sisters are fine. Mom is usual. Everything is regular in life except I am still seeing the burning skull heads. Yesterday Mom took me to Sears for school clothes. I told my sisters I could see the people's head bones. They said DO NOT tell Mom. A guy moved a trailer onto the empty lot by our house. His skull is spectacular, many colors glowing. — Lynda Barry

I run a tight ship, but I try and make it seem like I'm not doing that at all. — Lynda Barry

Something can only become an illusion after disillusionment. before that, it is something real. what caused the disillusionment? no one told me the print on the wall was just ink and paper and had no life of its own. at some point the cat stopped blinking, and i stopped thinking it could. — Lynda Barry

In health we're doing the digestive system. We each got assigned a topic for an oral report. I got the small intestine. I swear to god I hate my life. — Lynda Barry

Like say if the mom and dad of god said he could never get dirty. There would be no world! — Lynda Barry

You have to be willing to spend time making things for no known reason. — Lynda Barry

I think of images as an immune system and a transit system. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

You know that great car-stomach feeling when you fly over a hump? That was my whole body. — Lynda Barry

Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

Remember how you used to be able to feel your bed breathing and the walls spinning when you were a kid? — Lynda Barry

I look crazy. I know I do. Been true since I was a kid! — Lynda Barry

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

Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

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

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. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke. — Lynda Barry

You keep seeing your picture on posters that you are missing but you're not. That'd be weird, right? Or say you look down at the sidewalk and earthworms are spelling your name. Or you open a peanut bag and the 'hello' is written in your writing on the inside of the shell. Would that weird ya? — Lynda Barry

I believe [images] are the soul's immune system and transit system. — Lynda Barry

People think that whatever I put into strips has happened to me in my life. — Lynda Barry

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! — Lynda Barry

In life there are always these things happening if you can just get the joke. — Lynda Barry

What is an imaginary friend? are there also imaginary enemies? — Lynda Barry

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

Above me soft footsteps, the sound through the ceiling of a teenager haunted by a door to the night. My cousin Maybonne lights up a Salem, blows ghosts to the darkness, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

A man who has been dead for a week in a hot trailer looks more like a man than you would first expect. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry

I wasn't afraid to be laughed at or be loud. — Lynda Barry

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. — Lynda Barry