Lynda Barry

“When we finish a book, why do we hold it in both hands and gaze at it as if it were somehow alive?”

“The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away.I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.”

“Above me soft footsteps, the sound through the ceiling of a teenager haunted by a door to the night. My cousin Maybonne lights up a Salem, blows ghosts to the darkness, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.”

“I am hell with a knife and there is nothing I can really do about it but try and keep my mouth shut and try not to let it show.”

“Ask a burning question, get a burning answer”

“No, she answered, “one is of tin, and one of straw; one is a girl and another a Lion. None of them is fit to work, so you may tear them into small pieces.”

“It is true that I am a person with black pockets of evil and hatred in my heart. There are underground places inside of me”

“As I enter the small intestine I get squeezed by muscles. Its dark and the walls look like slimey crushed velvet theres pancreas juice on me help me I am disintigrating.”

“In health we're doing the digestive system. We each got assigned a topic for an oral report. I got the small intestine. I swear to god I hate my life.”

“Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs.”

“What if she stepped on a needle and it went right into her foot and Roberta would not feel it and the needle would rise and rise and rise through the veins leading up to the heart and then the needle would STAB HER IN THE HEART and Roberta would DIE and it would be VERY PAINFUL this according to nurse mother a medical expert on Freaky Ways to Croak... The mother shouted that she knew several people who died from the Rising Stab of the Unfelt Needle or RSUN she has seen cases of it many times and not ONE PERSON HAS SURVIVED IT.”

“Mr. Harmong is the cheapest chintziest most pig-lipped tightwad skanked-out lardo king landlord of all time.”

“You may be a lady but your are still the man!”

“Then how can you ever know about the beautiful goodness of Mud? How bad it wants to be things. How bad it wants to get on your legs and arms and take your footprints and handprints and how bad it wants you to make it alive! Mud is always ready to play with you. Seriously you should try it!”

“Like say if the mom and dad of god said he could never get dirty. There would be no world!”

“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.”

“once i knew the blinking cat could not really blink, was just paper and ink.”

“are memories pictures or the secret doorway?”

“what is an imaginary friend? are there also imaginary enemies?”

“i believe [images] are the soul's immune system and transit system.”

“At the center of everything we call 'the arts,' and children call 'play,' is something which seems somehow alive.”

“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.”

“i didn't know there were different lines of aliveness, and two worlds contained by each other.”

“What year is it in your imagination?”

“The thing i call 'my mind' seems to be kind of like a landlord that doesn't really know its tenants.”

“What is an idea made of? Of future, past and also meanwhile.”

“I kept trying to find a way to turn myself so that I couldn't see the telephone poles or be in the path of father's breath. I was feeling dizzy and then very sick and the father was shouting, 'WHAT THE--GO TO THE HEAD, DO IT IN THE HEAD! DON'T PUKE ON ME, CLYDE! CLYDE!'I never did finish my letter to Jesus. I tried for a while but I couldn't think of anything else to say besides, Have a Good Summer and Stay Crazy.”

“You have to be willing to spend time making things for no known reason.”

“No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible BE the unexpected.”

“Dear Blubbo, How is it going? It is fine here. My sisters are fine. Mom is usual. Everything is regular in life except I am still seeing the burning skull heads. Yesterday Mom took me to Sears for school clothes. I told my sisters I could see the people's head bones. They said DO NOT tell Mom. A guy moved a trailer onto the empty lot by our house. His skull is spectacular, many colors glowing.”

“Maybonne said "Just because someone has lace-up hip huggers does not mean they can control the world". Then Magreet let her wear those pants. When my aunt saw them on her she shouted "Are you trying to kill me?!”

“We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay.”

“If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.If you say "No! I don't want it right now," that's when you'll get it for sure. Love will make a way out of no way. Love is an exploding cigar which we willingly smoke.”

“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.”

“On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to god and my country but it might not be the same god as the god of the church and I might not be digging on the message of the president because the windmills of his mind are cracked on a lot of subjects concerning people.”

“If I could only turn the etch-a-sketch of my life upside down.”

“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.”

“A man who has been dead for a week in a hot trailer looks more like a man than you would first expect.”

“This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.”

“Flies die in so many lonely places.-Roberta Rohbeson”

“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?”

“But when the thing that is scaring you is already Jesus, who are you supposed to pray to?”

“Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.”

“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.”

“He's picked clean! Eaten by cats!”

“You may be a lady but you are still the man!”

“Mr. Harmong is the cheapest chinztiest most pig-lipped tightwad skanked-out lardo king landlord of all time.”