Quotes for All
I’m only trying to present as honest a portrayal of the grimness of human ambition as I can. I’d hope it’s rather uplifting, actually, since I find the sort of blind optimism and empty laughter of a great deal of contemporary culture to be more depressing than something that admits to a potential for disappointment … Read more
I arrived at my way of working as a way of visually approximating what I feel the tone of fiction to be in prose versus the tone one might use to write biography; I would never do a biographical story using the deliberately synthetic way of cartooning I use to write fiction. I try to … Read more
There’s something very strange and wrong-seeming about drawing realistic eyeballs in comics, at least in the mode of comics where action is carried more by the movement of the characters rather than where narration links disparately framed selected images. Chris Ware
Real drawing is about specifics. It’s about describing an object as accurately as possible. In a comic strip you have to draw a picture of the idea of the object. You have to draw the word that you are picturing, then you have to mix in specifics with it for it to work as a … Read more
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
Comics are not illustration, any more than fiction is copywriting. Illustration is essentially the application of artistic technique or style to suit a commercial or ancillary purpose; not that cartooning can’t be this (see any restaurant giveaway comic book or superhero media property as an example), but comics written and produced by a cartoonist sitting … Read more
There’s a rhythm to the words combined with the pictures [in a comic]. Whenever I’m working on a comic strip I re-read it, probably hundreds of times through to pay attention to how all of those things work. Sometimes even changing the angle of a character’s eyebrow can really, seriously alter the effect and overall … Read more
I lose faith every time I have to start a new page, and this is no joke. I’ve occasionally been criticized over the past couple of years for publicly complaining about how difficult drawing comics is, yet I’ve only mentioned it so that the younger cartoonists who are trying it out and finding it difficult … Read more
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
As a cartoonist, my single goal is to create people with whom, for better or for worse – and regardless of how embarrassing it sounds – I can fall in love and somehow feel something deeply about, and through. Chris Ware