Bryan Lee O'Malley Quotes

I always wanted to write something illustrated, and the Details strip finally gave me the opportunity.

I enjoy the art, and I enjoy drawing. I think my printing to this day looks like the printing right out of a comic book.

Considering my specialization in architecture, I'm not surprised that the first graphic novel to thoroughly engage, not to say captivate, me is Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor's 'Batman: Death by Design.'

When I put together a graphic novel, I don't think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.

I didn't have the time to literally write and draw the strip at the same time.

I think with something like 'Watchmen' you can genuinely call that a graphic novel because it has the weight and the intent of a proper novel and it also is the complete story.

Kyle Baker's work is really funny, but it's also got a very clear vision.

Comic-strip artists generally have very modest ambitions. Day to day, we labor to fit together all these little moving parts - a character or two, a few lines of dialogue, framing, pacing, payoff - but we certainly don't think of them adding up over time to some larger portrait of our times.

I think the problem with the term graphic novel is it sounds pompous, it sounds pretentious, whereas on the continent, they call it an album, which to me sounds, it's got more much of a connotation of a kind of a music single and an album collection.

'Cerebus' is my attempt at a literary work.

One of the key characteristics of the comic book medium is that it is not brought to life by just one voice.

Cartoonists' dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw.

I came up with American Splendor. Some people think it's American Squalor.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

I used to draw cartoons. I'd just show them to some of my friends, expecting that they were going to appreciate them, that they were going to enjoy reading them.

It was always in the back of my mind while we were working on the first year of 'Rookie' that we'd do a print version at some point.

A lot of times, the idea of a comic will be, 'Wouldn't it be cool if you...' But instead of doing it, I'll draw a comic about it.

Writing 'The Spirit' is really fun.

If you're going to draw a comic strip every day, you're going to have to draw on every experience in your life.

Jordie Bellaire knows how to tell a story with color.

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

I wanted to create comics as soon as a I learned humans were behind them, that they were not natural phenomena like trees and boulders.

The most natural thing for us is drawing. The characters [in Persepolis] are hand drawn. We're not technical people. We don't know how to type.

I think I'll try to keep working in film for a little bit. There's something still kind of magical about it, that I don't want to let go of.

I have a feeling that in art the need to understand and the need to communicate are one.