I enjoy the opportunity to use swear symbols. The reader reads into them something worse than what you normally would have. They work as this outburst of incoherent anger. I've found ways to write around swearing that are much more effective, rather than going for what someone really would say.

Daniel Clowes

More Quotes by Daniel Clowes
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More Quotes From Daniel Clowes

For me, the whole process involves envisioning this Ghost World comic book in my head as I'm working.

Daniel Clowes
envisioning process book

In some ways, I never outgrew my adolescence. I wake up in the morning and think, 'Oh my God, I'm late for a math test!' But then I say, 'Wait a minute. I'm 40.

Daniel Clowes
math morning thinking
I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book... by Daniel Clowes

I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book publishing.

Daniel Clowes
ships book thinking

At a certain point, I realized that I could draw anything, and there was nothing I should avoid - I could make it work. That's opened me up to being able to be much more comfortable telling any kind of story.

Daniel Clowes
able kind stories

You try to make the world a better place and what does it get you? I mean, Christ, how the hell does one man stand a chance against four billion assholes?

Daniel Clowes
trying men mean

I try to only work on the screenplays for a few hours a day when I'm in my most voluble mood, just sort of writing whatever comes into my head. It's a very freeing thing.

Daniel Clowes
hours writing trying

I never feel there's anything I can't do with comics. There are certain things in comics that you can't do in any other medium: for instance, in Mister Wonderful, Marshall's narration overlaps the events as they're going on. That would be difficult in film; you could blot speech out with a voiceover, but it wouldn't have the same effect. That's always of interest, to see what new things you can do in comics form.

Daniel Clowes
difficult film wonderful

The greatest moment of my life was, somebody sent me a cable-access show from Chicago that had Joey Ramone on it showing the video we made together. And he was talking about, like, "This guy Dan Clowes postponed his wedding for us. He's a great guy."

Daniel Clowes
guy moments together
I never know if a book is crazy or not. There's that fear - this... by Daniel Clowes

I never know if a book is crazy or not. There's that fear - this is the one that will end it all.

Daniel Clowes
crazy book

I lose faith in everything else, but rarely in my work. If I start to get bored, I change it to make it more interesting. I try not to take it too seriously, but I also try to never cheat or hurry things along.

Daniel Clowes
bored trying interesting

It's a challenge to express real life in dramatic terms. In an entirely "made-up" story, you are sometimes overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities.

Daniel Clowes
overwhelmed real challenges

Comics seldom move me the way I would be moved by a novel or movie. I say this as someone who would rather read comics than watch movies, listen to music, anything. But it's not an operatic medium. I hear other people talk about being moved to tears by comics. I can't imagine that.

Daniel Clowes
tears people moving

If you think about it enough to have a really articulate answer, you're not doing it right. That's how I feel about art. If your thought process could take you to knowing exactly what you're doing and why, there would be no point in making the art. It would become like propaganda. It's more nebulous than that.

Daniel Clowes
propaganda art thinking

Everybody just lets the media do their thinking for them... that's why you'll never hear any reggae on the radio!

Daniel Clowes
radio media thinking

I have a very low tolerance for animation. I'm used to the perfect integrity you get from drawing your own comics. There's something about that that animation always loses.

Daniel Clowes
tolerance perfect integrity

You can give some kind of spark of life to a comic that a photograph doesn't really have. A photograph, even if it's connecting with you, it seems very dead on the page sometimes.

Daniel Clowes
pages photography giving

I'm always looking for things I imagine must exist, but don't - this is usually the impetus to create that thing myself.

Daniel Clowes
imagine

The secret to being alone is to organize your time; to develop habits and routines and gradually elevate their importance to where they seem almost like normal, healthy activities.

Daniel Clowes
normal healthy secret

You have to find the tone of the piece and modulate that. There are ways to indicate that - I try to incorporate the biggest range I can within the story, going from humorous to serious without it being jarring. That's the hardest part, to keep that balance. It requires being constantly aware of where you are in the story. You can't really do that in a movie: You can't slightly modulate the tone by the way the character's eyeballs look in one certain scene.

Daniel Clowes
balance humorous trying

I must have been 3 years old or less, and I remember paging through these comics, trying to figure out the stories. I couldn't read the words, so I made up my own stories.

Daniel Clowes
stories trying years