quotes by Lynda Barry

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

"You may be a lady but you are still the man!"
— Lynda Barry (The Lynda Barry Experience)

"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 (What It Is)

"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

"He's picked clean! Eaten by cats!"
— Lynda Barry

"If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile"
— Lynda Barry

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

"Flies die in so many lonely places.

-Roberta Rohbeson"
— Lynda Barry

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

"No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible BE the unexpected."
— Lynda Barry (Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel)

"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 (What It Is)

"“If it is your first time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.”"
— Lynda Barry

"At the center of everything we call 'the arts,' and children call 'play,' is something which seems somehow alive."
— Lynda Barry (What It Is)

"i believe they (images) are the soul's immune system and transit system."
— Lynda Barry (What It Is)

"But when the thing that is scaring you is already Jesus, who are you supposed to pray to?"
— Lynda Barry (Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel)

"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

"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 is an imaginary friend? are there also imaginary enemies?"
— Lynda Barry (What It Is)

"are memories pictures or the secret doorway?"
— Lynda Barry (What It Is)

"once i knew the blinking cat could not really blink, was just paper and ink."
— Lynda Barry (What It Is)

"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 It Is)

"What is an idea made of? Of future, past and also meanwhile."
— Lynda Barry (What It Is)

"We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay."
— Lynda Barry (What It Is)

"The thing i call 'my mind' seems to be kind of like a landlord that doesn't really know its tenants."
— Lynda Barry (What It Is)

"What year is it in your imagination?"
— Lynda Barry (What It Is)

"i didn't know there were different lines of aliveness, and two worlds contained by each other."
— Lynda Barry (What It Is)