LYNDA BARRY

I am about as detailed as a shadow.

When you think about it, giving up your 'real' personality is a small price to pay for the richness of 'living happily ever after' with an actual man!

Remember how you used to be able to feel your bed breathing and the walls spinning when you were a kid?

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.

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.

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

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?

The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock.

My childhood is always going to limit me.

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.

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.

Kids don't plan to play. They don't go: 'Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It's gonna be a three-act.'

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

'Good Times' is a story about the loss of innocence, how adults are responsible for their actions but children aren't.

If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.

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.

I think of images as an immune system and a transit system.

I used to live a very social life and never spend much solitary time looking at birds or reading.

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.

We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay.

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.

I go to work the minute I open my eyes.

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.

People think that whatever I put into strips has happened to me in my life.

I run a tight ship, but I try and make it seem like I'm not doing that at all.