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" 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. "

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" 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

School

Light

God

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

" 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. "

" Race and class are the easiest divisions. It's very stupid. "

" Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke. "

" I remember my comic strips being called 'new wave.' It bugged me. "

" Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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?' "

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

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

" If I had had me for a student I would have thrown me out of class immediately. "

" 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

Parents

Live

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

" 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

Lucky

Man

" When you are little, you will draw pictures for no reason. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" '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. "

" I am about as detailed as a shadow. "

Lynda Barry

Shadow

About

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

" 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. "

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

Lynda Barry

Funny

People

" 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. "

" In my writing class, we never, ever talk about the writing - ever. We never address a story that's been read. I also won't let anyone look at the person who's reading. No eye contact; everybody has to draw a spiral. And I would like to do a drawing class where we could talk about anything except for the drawing. No one could even mention it. "

" 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

Kind

Off