“In the realm of art … we can fulfill our expectations only by learning which authors disappoint and which authors offer the true nourishment for the soul. We find out who the good writers are, and then we look or wait for their next book. Such writers — living or dead, whatever genre they write in, critically fashionable or not, academically approved or not — are those who not only meet our expectations but surpass them. That is the gift the great storytellers have. They tell the same stories over and over (how many stories are there?), but when they tell them they are new, they are news, they renew us, they show us the world made new.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“When it comes to my work, it’s all one story, and it’s none of my business what that story is. I don’t mean that sarcastically. I’m not saying that my opinions are less important than other people’s. I just think that, after a certain point, the work takes on a life of its own, and whether I like it or not doesn’t really matter.

I respect the person who was doing these books then, even though now I would go back and redraw them completely differently. I have compassion for things I did that don’t work. I see them as examples that can encourage other artists. You might think that you’ll never be the fastest, or the most realistic, or the most skilled artist, but there’s a home for you out there, whoever you are. My career is proof that you can get into the system, find a tiny home off in a corner, and prosper.

Some might claim that I’m too young to be saying this, but I’m at a point in my life where I’m thinking a lot about how I want to spend my remaining time. Should I go off into semiretirement and not do anything more than sketches and covers for fun? Or should I keep chasing the big projects? How do you know if you’re doing something that would best be left at the bottom of the sea? Should you take these 20 coconuts, weave them together in a net, and throw them out into the ocean, or not? I think the ocean will be just fine either way. Frankly, it probably doesn’t matter one way or the other. It’s kind of freeing if you can get there.

It was pure fate that allowed me to get to some of these places; I’m just a goofball who stumbled into a couple of things. Yes, once it happened to me, I tried to make something of it, but it could just as easily have been someone else.

Humility and suffering are good things. They keep my head from swelling up too much. Although I may sound self-deprecating, there has to be a layer of narcissism underneath or else I couldn’t keep working.

I need to be careful with my self-deprecation. If I’m impatient with myself, that’s one thing, but if you, the reader, tell me that you like something I’ve done, I need to stand back and respect that. My opinions are to be disregarded. Your first impression about my work is more important than anything that’s in this introduction.”

— Sam Kieth, 2018

A few quotes from Alan Moore, via Magic Words:

“You can’t buy that empowerment. To just know that as far as you are aware, you have not got a price; that there is not an amount of money large enough to make you compromise even a tiny bit of principle that, as it turned out, would make no practical difference anyway. I’d advise everyone to do it, otherwise you’re going to end up mastered by money and that’s not a thing you want ruling your life.”

————

“Possibly because of my own background, age and prejudices, I believe that something funny, lovely and informative that is available to everyone without the need for a device or internet connection is the option which, to me, makes most sense both emotionally and ethically.”

————

“Illuminate your little patch of ground, the people that you know, the things that you want to commemorate. Light them up with your art, with your music, with your writing, with whatever it is that you do. Do that, and little by little it might gradually get to be, if not a better world, then a better understood world.”

————

“I’m not interested in traveling. I’m all over the world in my head, I’m everywhere. I’m not very often where I actually am, so I don’t really have to move.”

“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.”

— James Baldwin

“We are entirely made up of bits and pieces, woven together so diversely and so shapelessly that each one of them pulls its own way at every moment. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and other people.”

— Michel de Montaigne

“Ed’s Drawing Books in many ways are about knocking the title of ‘art’ off its big and scary perch. The books show you ways to draw, not ways to be an artist. In fact, the words ‘art’ or ‘artist’ are nowhere to be found in the Drawing Book series, save for the mandatory Library of Congress shelving notes. When he does talks for young people, Ed likes to say that he “draws pictures for a living.” In his Drawing Books, he wasn’t out to spawn legions of artists, he was out to give kids the tickle of fun and success by drawing something that they might not have thought they could draw. “Not everyone needs to be an artist,” he says, “but everyone needs to feel good about themselves.” And it’s key to Ed’s worldview that one can have fun drawing without the burdensome idea of being an ‘artist,’ just as one can have fun playing catch or shooting baskets without needing to think of one’s self as an ‘athlete.'”

— Caleb Neelon on illustrator Ed Emberley

“Lots of people copy, lots of people don’t copy. I copy. I find it teaches me things and above all it gives me consolation.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

“I think part of the power of any artwork is the physical presence you sense behind the creation. A real person made these things, and when you see the actual drawings, you can participate in that.”

— Bill Watterson

“Sure, everything’s been done, but it’s much healthier not to know about it.”

— Orson Welles

“People like me, who care about printing, constitute the tiniest lunatic fringe in the nation.”

— Leonard Baskin