(b. 1956– )
U.S. cartoonist, author, and teacher
Lynda Barry
I don’t think there’s any other reason we have art than to save us, the way our liver is there to keep us alive. I have come to regard the arts as external organs. They have always been as critical to me as my kidneys are. It’s like a dialysis machine you draw yourself.
“How Non-Artists Can Draw: Comics Great Lynda Barry on Teaching Creativity,” ARTNews, by Nicole Casamento, June 5, 2014.
It’s good having friends who farm. It’s good to know the names of their cows and the calves that come in the spring. It’s fun to see the new ones when I head up to get eggs from my neighbor. It’s good knowing they would be here in a minute for us anytime day or night, and it’s good knowing they can count on us the same way. We have a 1958 Ford tractor that I love. We have silos and a barn that has been here 100 years. The original house burned down years before we got here. Our house is a little tract house—nothing much at all. But we put on a tin roof and a covered porch and built a masonry bread oven. We have a big garden—man, I’m starting to cry here. It’s not the prettiest farm at all, but it’s the best place I’ve ever lived in my life.
Interview by Amy Kellner, Vice, October 1, 2008.
The key to eternal happiness is low overhead and no debt.
Interview by Amy Kellner, Vice, October 1, 2008.
Kids don’t plan to play. They don’t go: “Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It’s gonna be a three-act.”
“Lynda Barry Will Make You Believe In Yourself,” by Dan Kois, The New York Times Magazine, October 27, 2011.
Didn’t somebody ask Leonard Cohen where he got his ideas, and he said that if he knew, he’d go there more often? What I’m trying to do is find a way to get into that place. And I can do it on my own, but it’s been really interesting being around other people, trying to show them about it, because it really is just showing somebody where the path is down to the curvy river. And people think I’m a genie at first, and then they realize, no, I just knew where the trailhead was.
“Lynda Barry in search of the image world,” The Boston Phoenix, interview by S.I. Rosenbaum, April 13, 2011.
I turned five 50 years ago.
“Lynda Barry in search of the image world,”The Boston Phoenix, interview by S.I. Rosenbaum, April 13, 2011.