I can definitely say that of all my friends who I consider to be really great cartoonists, we’re all trying to aim at basically the same thing, which is an ever closer representation of what it feels like to be alive. – Chris Ware
I guess I just don’t like being physically in front of people I don’t know very well, because I expect to be ‘seen through,’ or, even worse, instantly hated. – Chris Ware
I don’t think of myself as an illustrator. I think of myself as a cartoonist. I write the story with pictures – I don’t illustrate the story with the pictures. – Chris Ware
When I was 11 years old, I thought, ‘All I really wanna be able to do is my own comic book,’ and I’m doing it. I don’t have any other real ambitions. I have nothing to conquer at all. – Chris Ware
I prefer to imagine that my wife, a few friends, and occasionally my mom are the only ones who read what I do, though I realize that this is somewhat unrealistic. – Chris Ware
I believe that the development of language – of naming, categorization, conceptualization – destroys our ability to see as we age. – Chris Ware
As I’ve gotten older I’ve occasionally found myself nostalgic for earlier periods of solitude, though I realize that’s also likely a false nostalgia, as I know there was nothing I wanted more during those periods than to not be alone, whatever that means. – Chris Ware
During my Austin years, I was drawing a regular strip for the University Of Texas newspaper, going to school, delivering blood, and trying to change my approach and ‘style’ as much as I could, since I knew that I’d calcify as I got older. – Chris Ware
Mostly, I was only interested in television as a kid, and the majority of reading material I collected was an adjunct to that central concern, comic books and magazines included. – Chris Ware
My grandmother was an unparalleled storyteller who gave me a preview of how life might turn out, and also fortified my empathy. – Chris Ware
My wife has joked that if anything ever happened to me, she’d gladly live out her life without anyone else around. I think it bugs her I’m home all the time; such is the life cycle of the cartoonist, however. – Chris Ware
The thing I don’t understand is why so often one hears discussion of the fruits of human labor as if it’s all the creation of some alien race. – Chris Ware
I have a preponderance to look smug in photos; something to do with the way my mouth turns up at the corners. – Chris Ware
The first thing I do when I get up is I look out the window. I’ve been looking at the same image for six years. It’s imprinted in my mind like an afterimage template. – Chris Ware
No one blames themselves if they don’t understand a cartoon, as they might with a painting or ‘real’ art; they simply think it’s a bad cartoon. – Chris Ware
Lately, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been living a dream for the last 10 years or so; I can’t account for most of my 20s, and I have to continually remind myself that certain people are dead now and many of my friends have children. – Chris Ware
Well, there are better cartoonists now than there ever have been. I firmly believe that. There’s some amazing work being done. – Chris Ware
I don’t think there’s any independent cartoonist whose stuff I don’t like or respect in at least some way or another. We’re all marginal laborers – we’re practically medical oddities – so I don’t see why we can’t all be nice to each other. – Chris Ware
I still can’t get over the idea that respectable adults now go to see superhero movies and that such films get reviewed in the ‘New Yorker.’ Clearly, I am seriously out of step with the times. – Chris Ware
I think it has most to do with the way in which a story is told, whether it feels real either via the music of the telling or the ‘honesty’ of the story. – Chris Ware
There seems to be such a laziness in – and I hate to use this phrase – the modern world. Everything is pumped out so quickly so that you can read it while passing by, like billboards or those flashcards before movie shows. – Chris Ware
Comics, at least in periodical form, exist almost entirely free of any pretense; the critical world of art hardly touches them, and they’re 100% personal. – Chris Ware
