Lynda Barry Quotes

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"I wasn't afraid to be laughed at or be loud."

"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."

"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."

"Love will make a way out of no way."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

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

"The strips are nearly effortless unless I am really emotionally upset, a wreck."

"Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke."

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

"I go to work the minute I open my eyes."

"I need to be cheered up a lot. I think funny people are people who need to be cheered up."

"I used to live a very social life and never spend much solitary time looking at birds or reading."

"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."