55+ Chris Ware Quotes On Culture, Creativity And Art

Chris Ware is an American cartoonist and graphic artist. He is best known for his graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, which won the Guardian First Book Award and was listed as one of the 100 best books of the 2000s by The Times. He is also the creator of the Acme Novelty Library series, which has been praised for its innovative use of color and intricate design. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Chris Ware on culture, creativity, art.

Top 10 Chris Ware Quotes

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Even the disappointing diffusion of a sheer curtain can suggest the most colorful bouquet of unspeakable secrets.
5. A book sometimes seems to impose a through-line to life that real life doesn't actually have.
6. 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.
7. One of the most valuable things one of my art teachers said to me was, ‘Don’t get upset by criticism. Value the fact that at least someone noticed what you did.
8. I believe that the development of language - of naming, categorization, conceptualization - destroys our ability to see as we age.
9. 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.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• Comics are not a genre, but a developing language.
• I guess we all make choices as to how we want to live, right?
• My mother was always encouraging about my wanting to be an artist.
• Drawing on a computer doesn't make any sense to me. It's not intuitive.
• Every city began as a campsite - pg. 25
• My head looks like an uncooked ham with glasses.

Chris Ware Quotes About World

Fundamentally, I have no idea how the world works, though I am trying to figure it out. — Chris Ware

The modern world seems to make fun of people in a lot of ways. — Chris Ware

As children, as we learn what things are, we are slowly learning to dismiss them visually. As adults, entirely submerged in words and concepts, we spend almost all of our time thinking and worrying about the past and the future, hardly ever looking at or engaging with the world visually. — Chris Ware

Chris Ware Quotes About People

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

As a cartoonist, my single goal is to create people with whom, for better or for worse - and regardless of how embarrassing it sounds - I can "fall in love" and somehow feel something deeply about, and through. — Chris Ware

I had a messy signature as a child, and my grandmother said this suggested I had no regard for other people. She was right. — 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

Chris Ware Quotes About Real

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. — 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

The real power of comics is writing as you draw. — Chris Ware

Cartoons are not real drawings, because they are drawings intended to be read. — Chris Ware

Chris Ware Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

There is absolutely no single aspect of one's personality that is more important to develop than empathy, which is not a skill at which men typically are asked to excel. I believe empathy is not only the core of art, literature and music, but should also be at the core of society, from ethics to economics. — 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

Sometimes I get worried I'm getting too caught up in the nauseatingly oily smoothness of my own line, when all I'm trying to do is make it as clear as possible. — Chris Ware

One of the things that appealed to me most about comics was that you can pick the ones you like and build your own personal pantheon. — Chris Ware

There is something about the medium [in comics] that allows for a simulation of actual experience with the added benefit of actually reading. You're reading pictures, but you are also looking at them. It's a sort of combined activity that I can't really think of any other medium having, other than, say, a foreign film when you are reading and seeing. It allows for all sorts of associations that might not come up with just words or just pictures. — Chris Ware

A comic is a way of literally experiencing someone else's vision with a purity that I don't think any other medium offers; there are no technical, electronic or financial limitations; one only has to work harder to improve. Lately I think a new attitude has prevailed that comics aren't inherently an Art form, but that some cartoonists are genuinely artists. — Chris Ware

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. — Chris Ware

It's somehow more comforting to imagine that one's suffering is unique, and to measure against what one doesn't know, rather than against what one does. — 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

Cartooning is an artistic commitment that requires the full attention and passion of the artist on every level; one should not get into it if one expects to do anything more than produce a book or a story that is exactly as one wants it to be. — Chris Ware

Whereas in a memory you edit things out and sort of restructure the things to seem a little bit more heroic, or to focus on particular aspects that magnify or reduce certain things. — Chris Ware

Unlike prose writing, the strange process of writing with pictures encourages associations and recollections to accumulate literally in front of your eyes; people, places, and events appear out of nowhere. Doors open into rooms remembered from childhood, faces form into dead relatives, and distant loves appear, almost magically, on the page- all deceptively manageable, visceral, the combinations sometimes even revelatory. — Chris Ware

There's something very strange and wrong-seeming about drawing realistic eyeballs in comics, at least in the mode of comics where action is carried more by the movement of the characters rather than where narration links disparately framed selected images. — 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

I have a preponderance to look smug in photos; something to do with the way my mouth turns up at the corners. — Chris Ware

I wouldn't classify television as "cool," because to me anything that involves the reader's consciousness to drive and carry a story is an "active" medium, and anything that sort of just pours into the eyeballs and ears is the opposite. — Chris Ware

I'm only trying to present as honest a portrayal of the grimness of human ambition as I can. I'd hope it's rather uplifting, actually, since I find the sort of blind optimism and empty laughter of a great deal of "contemporary culture" to be more depressing than something that admits to a potential for disappointment and a gnawing sense of existential mockery. — Chris Ware

I don't think that people are necessarily going to films simply because they were adapted from comics, though I could be wrong. Comics aren't really misunderstood either, they've just been mostly silly for the past century, and those genre-centered stories have found their way into the movie theaters over the past couple of decades because a generation who grew up reading them has, well, grown up. — Chris Ware

I think cartooning gets at, and re-creates on the page, some sixth sense ... in a way no other medium can. — Chris Ware

I don't trust art that promises a 24-hour joyride. In fact, there seems to be a modern sense of entitlement for such constant "ups," which is a repugnant attitude any way one chooses to look at it. I definitely believe in the possibility of happiness, though; it's just something that I think, rightfully, is rare in its genuine form, and that it can't be counterfeited. — 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 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 was used to being disliked as a kid. Not that I didn't deserve it: I was a pretty sad and unappealing creature, and still am, I guess. It's sort of simplistic to think that one tries to make stuff that accounts for one's repulsiveness as a person, but there's some truth to it. So, when I read something unfavorable, I always take it deeply personally. It's as if my efforts have been in vain, and I should just quit. — 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

Comic strip is almost like music on a page that you perform in your mind. It's not just pictures. There's a particular rhythm and structure to it that is unlike anything else. It literally is like music. You hear it in your mind as you read it. — Chris Ware

"Real" drawing is about specifics. It's about describing an object as accurately as possible. In a comic strip you have to draw a picture of the idea of the object. You have to draw the word that you are picturing, then you have to mix in specifics with it for it to work as a story. But you are still working with drawn words. — Chris Ware

The thing I like most about books is that anybody can afford them. They have an innate valuelessness. — Chris Ware

Life Lessons by Chris Ware

1. Chris Ware's work emphasizes the importance of storytelling and conveys the idea that stories can be told through art.
2. His art also highlights the power of visual communication, showing how images can be used to express complex emotions and ideas.
3. Finally, Ware's work serves as a reminder that art can be a powerful tool for self-expression and can be used to explore difficult topics in a meaningful way.