Chris Ware Quotes

It's not movies and it's not "fine art." The beauty of a comic is that it's clear, direct communication. My work is getting simpler and more cartoony because I'm much more interested in communication now than in any illustrative value.

Comics is a great medium to get a lot of stories out.

The graphic novel form really interests me and I like the freedom that format offers.

In the right hands, a comic strip attains a beauty and elegance that, really, I would put against any other art.

This industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy.

The camera's a ballpoint pen, an imbecile; it's not worth anything if you don't have anything to say.

Photography is Art and Art is Photography.

Writing is a creative art form and the acting and directing is more of an interpretive art form.

I feel like at the end of the day, as entertaining as movies are, when you're part of them in a way, it's this beautiful art form and that's what it feels like for me. I'm not a painter, but I can express myself visually in a way that allows me to artistically create.

Drawing is more fun to me than writing. I think it's interesting to talk to different cartoonists about how those activities work for them. I'm a very writerly cartoonist. I certainly spend more time on the writing than I do on the drawing, even though the drawing, of course, is very time-consuming.

I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.

I think the best thing I learned from drawing comics is that it's a great exercise in concision.

Comics were a place where captivating images lit your imagination and showed you that you can create new kinds of people and worlds.

My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature.

Comics are not a genre, but a developing language.

Art is a technique of communication. The image is the most complete technique of all communication.

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.

Just as Renaissance artists provided narratives for the era they lived in, so do I. I'm always looking beyond the surface. I've done that ever since I first picked up a camera.

For me, I see filmmaking as art.

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

I think graphic novels are closer to prose than film, which is a really different form.

Comic books were just the means for me to tell the story.

And that, to me, is the main attraction to comics. It's an avenue to say what you want to say.