Chris Ware Quotes

#1. When I was a kid, I liked books that just seemed so dense you could lose yourself in them for a whole afternoon. They were like their own whole world.

Chris Ware

#2. Drawing on a computer doesn't make any sense to me. It's not intuitive.

Chris Ware

#3. I don't think of myself as an illustrator. I think of myself as a cartoonist. I write the story with pictures - I don't illustrate the story with the pictures.

Chris Ware

#4. A book sometimes seems to impose a through-line to life that real life doesn't actually have.

Chris Ware

#5. When I was 11 years old, I thought, 'All I really wanna be able to do is my own comic book,' and I'm doing it. I don't have any other real ambitions. I have nothing to conquer at all.

Chris Ware

#6. I guess we all make choices as to how we want to live, right?

Chris Ware

#7. Cartoons are not real drawings, because they are drawings intended to be read.

Chris Ware

#8. It's somehow more comforting to imagine that one's suffering is unique, and to measure against what one doesn't know, rather than against what one does.

Chris Ware

#9. Whereas in a memory you edit things out and sort of restructure the things to seem a little bit more heroic, or to focus on particular aspects that magnify or reduce certain things.

Chris Ware

#10. I guess I just don't like being physically in front of people I don't know very well, because I expect to be 'seen through,' or, even worse, instantly hated.

Chris Ware

#11. ...the nest is agiggle with excitement.

Chris Ware

#12. I think it has most to do with the way in which a story is told, whether it feels real either via the music of the telling or the 'honesty' of the story.

Chris Ware

#13. During my Austin years, I was drawing a regular strip for the University Of Texas newspaper, going to school, delivering blood, and trying to change my approach and 'style' as much as I could, since I knew that I'd calcify as I got older.

Chris Ware

#14. I don't think there's any independent cartoonist whose stuff I don't like or respect in at least some way or another. We're all marginal laborers - we're practically medical oddities - so I don't see why we can't all be nice to each other.

Chris Ware

#15. The real power of comics is writing as you draw.

Chris Ware

#16. Mostly, I was only interested in television as a kid, and the majority of reading material I collected was an adjunct to that central concern, comic books and magazines included.

Chris Ware

#17. Lately, I can't shake the feeling that I've been living a dream for the last 10 years or so; I can't account for most of my 20s, and I have to continually remind myself that certain people are dead now and many of my friends have children.

Chris Ware

#18. I mean, if all we are is bundles of energy... what is a 'hug' anyway?... and how can we ever really touch each other?

Chris Ware

#19. Even the disappointing diffusion of a sheer curtain can suggest the most colorful bouquet of unspeakable secrets.

Chris Ware

#20. I believe that the development of language - of naming, categorization, conceptualization - destroys our ability to see as we age.

Chris Ware

#21. This life we endure - how strange, yet how jolly

Chris Ware

#22. As children, as we learn what things are, we are slowly learning to dismiss them visually. As adults, entirely submerged in words and concepts, we spend almost all of our time thinking and worrying about the past and the future, hardly ever looking at or engaging with the world visually.

Chris Ware

#23. I have a preponderance to look smug in photos; something to do with the way my mouth turns up at the corners.

Chris Ware

#24. Comics, at least in periodical form, exist almost entirely free of any pretense; the critical world of art hardly touches them, and they're 100% personal.

Chris Ware

#25. No one blames themselves if they don't understand a cartoon, as they might with a painting or 'real' art; they simply think it's a bad cartoon.

Chris Ware

#26. My grandmother was an unparalleled storyteller who gave me a preview of how life might turn out, and also fortified my empathy.

Chris Ware

#27. Comic strip is almost like music on a page that you perform in your mind. It's not just pictures. There's a particular rhythm and structure to it that is unlike anything else. It literally is like music. You hear it in your mind as you read it.

Chris Ware

#28. My wife has joked that if anything ever happened to me, she'd gladly live out her life without anyone else around. I think it bugs her I'm home all the time; such is the life cycle of the cartoonist, however.

Chris Ware

#29. I can definitely say that of all my friends who I consider to be really great cartoonists, we're all trying to aim at basically the same thing, which is an ever closer representation of what it feels like to be alive.

Chris Ware

#30. The first thing I do when I get up is I look out the window. I've been looking at the same image for six years. It's imprinted in my mind like an afterimage template.

Chris Ware

#31. One of the most valuable things one of my art teachers said to me was, 'Don't get upset by criticism. Value the fact that at least someone noticed what you did.

Chris Ware

#32. The thing I don't understand is why so often one hears discussion of the fruits of human labor as if it's all the creation of some alien race.

Chris Ware

#33. Conveniently then he can forget it all exists. And, after a time only a general notion will remain in his mind, that there are places where he doesn't belong, and those where he seems to fall right in.

Chris Ware

#34. Ragtime has about the same amount of respect as comics. And in a way they're similar art forms. Ragtime is highly compositional, and the emotion in the music is built in, whereas in jazz a lot of that emotion comes from the way it's performed.

Chris Ware

#35. My head looks like an uncooked ham with glasses.

Chris Ware

#36. There seems to be a peculiar kind of clamor for comics. And I'm not sure how much a part of reality that is. I think partly it's based on some idea that comics are what everybody wants to read - and I don't think that's the case.

Chris Ware

#37. As I've gotten older I've occasionally found myself nostalgic for earlier periods of solitude, though I realize that's also likely a false nostalgia, as I know there was nothing I wanted more during those periods than to not be alone, whatever that means.

Chris Ware

#38. There seems to be such a laziness in - and I hate to use this phrase - the modern world. Everything is pumped out so quickly so that you can read it while passing by, like billboards or those flashcards before movie shows.

Chris Ware

#39. METAPHOR: A tightly fitting suit of metal, generally tin, which entirely encloses the wearer, both impeding free movement and preventing emotional expression and/or social contact.

Chris Ware

#40. I had a messy signature as a child, and my grandmother said this suggested I had no regard for other people. She was right.

Chris Ware

#41. I prefer to imagine that my wife, a few friends, and occasionally my mom are the only ones who read what I do, though I realize that this is somewhat unrealistic.

Chris Ware

#42. Comics is different than writing because when you draw something you are trying to visualize it and you are trying to put yourself in that space. And when you're drawing something, all sorts of associations come up in my mind that I never would have thought of otherwise.

Chris Ware

#43. I still can't get over the idea that respectable adults now go to see superhero movies and that such films get reviewed in the 'New Yorker.' Clearly, I am seriously out of step with the times.

Chris Ware

#44. Every couple of years or so, when Daniel Clowes releases a new book, one can almost sense the rectal contraction across the collective seat of our humble profession.

Chris Ware

#45. One of the things that appealed to me most about comics was that you can pick the ones you like and build your own personal pantheon.

Chris Ware

#46. Sometimes I get worried I'm getting too caught up in the nauseatingly oily smoothness of my own line, when all I'm trying to do is make it as clear as possible.

Chris Ware

#47. The modern world seems to make fun of people in a lot of ways.

Chris Ware

#48. Newly Found Sugary Spill: Tastes Like Dried Spit or Old Soda

Chris Ware

#49. Every city began as a campsite - pg. 25

Chris Ware

#50. My mother was always encouraging about my wanting to be an artist.

Chris Ware

#51. Understand that being able to say, 'I don't know what to do with my life' is an incredible privilege that 99% of the rest of the world will never enjoy.

Chris Ware

#52. I think cartooning gets at, and re-creates on the page, some sixth sense ... in a way no other medium can.

Chris Ware

#53. Well, there are better cartoonists now than there ever have been. I firmly believe that. There's some amazing work being done.

Chris Ware

#54. The thing I like most about books is that anybody can afford them. They have an innate valuelessness.

Chris Ware