Chris Ware Quotes

When you're writing TV or movies your vernacular is time, it's all based on rhythms, a character takes a beat or two characters have a moment, like everything is about time. And when you're writing a comic, everything is about space. It's how many panels to put on a page, when should you do a full page splash, what is the detail that you see in any particular image.

The ancestors of printed comics drew, painted and carved their time-paths from beginning to end, without interruption, ... the infinite canvas.

The experience of reading a comic should not be the time it takes to turn each page.

You can write a little and can draw a little, but there's necessarily a limitation on both in a comic strip, since it appears in such a tiny space.

I think with something like 'Watchmen' you can genuinely call that a graphic novel because it has the weight and the intent of a proper novel and it also is the complete story.

One of the key characteristics of the comic book medium is that it is not brought to life by just one voice.

In film, you have the luxury of accomplishing what you need in 24 frames every second. Comics, you only have five or six panels a page to do that.

Comics is a language. It's a language most people understand intuitively.

Some graphic narrative art presses against the panel: you wrestle with it at the level of the paper.

Comics don't work without the visuals, obviously.

Comics are a wonderful form. You can do so much with it.

I've always preferred comics that really rely on visual storytelling. It's what makes comics special. Otherwise, you're better off reading a novel.

The graphic novel form really interests me and I like the freedom that format offers.

Comics is different than writing because when you draw something you are trying to visualize it and you are trying to put yourself in that space. And when you're drawing something, all sorts of associations come up in my mind that I never would have thought of otherwise.

Cartooning isn't really drawing, any more than talking is singing... The possible vocabulary of comics is by definition unlimited, the tactility of an experience told in pictures outside the boundaries of words, and the rhythm of how these drawings 'feel' when read is where the real art resides.

It's not movies and it's not "fine art." The beauty of a comic is that it's clear, direct communication. My work is getting simpler and more cartoony because I'm much more interested in communication now than in any illustrative value.

The only place where you can really surprise or shock the reader, or make someone laugh, is on the lower righthand corner - the very last panel - so as you turn the page, the payoff is in the upper lefthand panel. To pace every story so that there's a setup and a payoff at the page turn was a huge challenge; it's a part of the medium and you really have to learn what can be done in the medium.

One way of understanding a graphic novel is that it's an ambitious comic and one way or another my comics have had ambitions. I have no problem with escapism. When I get my depressions all I want to do is escape reality.

I've always been really impressed with some of the longer graphic novels and thought it would be really amazing if one day I could try something like that.

I think the best thing I learned from drawing comics is that it's a great exercise in concision.

The term comics long ago became obsolete and inaccurate. It merely defined the content of the early joke-based comical strips. Sequential Art is a more accurate description of the form. I first suggested it because I believed something needed to be done to correct the feeling of inferiority by artists and writers in this field.

The main difference between illustration and comics is that comics are much, much more work. Every comics page is the equivalent of six to nine illustrations.

In the '40s and '50s, a lot of teachers and librarians saw the graphic novel as the enemy of reading.

Comics as art. I do comics as comics, and my opportunity to tell stories. Simple. Basic. Let the characters have the excitement, not the package. That's where I come from.

My overall artistic goal is to marry graphic design with comic books and traditional storytelling.