Quotes by Lynda Barry

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• I go to work the minute I open my eyes.
• 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.
• 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.
• If I had had me for a student I would have thrown me out of class immediately.
• 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.
• The strips are nearly effortless unless I am really emotionally upset, a wreck.
• Remember how you used to be able to feel your bed breathing and the walls spinning when you were a kid?
• Race and class are the easiest divisions. It's very stupid.
• Love will make a way out of no way.
• Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
• If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.
• 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.
• I wasn't afraid to be laughed at or be loud.
• 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.
• I used to live a very social life and never spend much solitary time looking at birds or reading.
• 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 need to be cheered up a lot. I think funny people are people who need to be cheered up.
• In life there are always these things happening if you can just get the joke.
• Embrace the chaos within you, for out of darkness blooms the most vibrant colors.
• Expect the unexpected, and whenever possible, be the unexpected.
• People who wonder whether the glass is half empty or half full are missing the point. The glass can always be refilled.
• Sometimes when you're feeling buried, you're actually just planted
• Happiness is like jam—you can't spread even a thin layer without getting some on yourself!
• Success is like a dial tone; you have to keep repicking the line until you get through.