Brian K. Vaughan Quotes

Music is very influential to my writing, as are theater and film.

When I illustrate a cover or a book, I draw upon what the author tells me; that's how I see my responsibility as an illustrator. J.K. Rowling is very descriptive in her writing — she gives an illustrator a lot to work with. Each story is packed full of rich visual descriptions of the atmosphere, the mood, the setting, and all the different creatures and people. She makes it easy for me. The images just develop as I sketch and retrace until it feels right and matches her vision.

Whatever I do today is the whole continuum of my experience. Like John Dewey said in his book ‘Art as Experience,’ you can’t separate experience from the work of art. So, if I write for the symphony today, you’re listening to everything that’s happened to me since I was 18 years old.

It is a curious fact that with 'Through the Looking-Glass' the faculty of making book illustrations departed from me... I have done nothing in that direction since.

In writing songs, I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie.

It's never the same relationship. I see my job as filling in the blanks. Whatever it is that the artist lacks in the process of making a record, I'm supposed to fill that in. And sometimes it's a lot of stuff and I have to hector them about working on the material and that sort of thing. Sometimes you have an artist that's really fairly self-sufficient; they just need another ear to offer some objective criticism, but otherwise pretty much know what they're doing. It varies a lot.

My job is to get people to write something truthful, something about truth and beauty - wherever they are - and to understand how literature is made. And then if they become great writers, that's great, and probably has nothing to do with me.

When I go and write with other artists - a lot of the time it's with them - it's like a therapy session almost. I ask them what they're listening to and what they're going through and what their influences are and I try to get inside of their head and step into their shoes for a second.

I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

By the time I get through writing a score, I know the book better than the book writer does, because I've examined every word, and questioned the book writer on every word.

I look at the film without any music or sound. I try to grasp the story from the screenplay. I try to write to the novel or book if there is one. I try to create music that's honest and true to my heart for the story.

It takes about a year to write an opera for me, but not a really a year of writing. I'm touring at the same time, and I'm playing, sometimes doing smaller projects.[The opera] Akhnaten fits in with Gandhi and Einstein, so that forms a trilogy in a way.I picked people who were these kind of larger than life characters, who kind of changed the world they lived in by almost the force of their personality and their inventiveness. People that I think not only do I admire but I think they're admirable people.

I'm always nice when I do drugs. But, you know, I'm nicer on the drug called "writing."

I write separately from the inking up. I'm sure this varies from cartoonist to cartoonist; I find that the writing is the hard part and the drawing is the fun part.

Painting is like breathing to me. It’s what I do all the time. Every day I make art, whether it is painting, writing or making a movie.

It's really interesting to observe each filmmaker's approach to filmmaking and I feel very fortunate to have worked with a lot of really interesting filmmakers and they all approach their job in unique ways.

Working with the kind of talent that I've gotten to work with, like the cast of Sin City, it makes me think probably more fully dimensionally about what is going on behind their eyes. But I draw the way I draw, and ain't nothing gonna change that. Although, I draw Marv and I think, "Boy, I could throw a little Mickey [Rourke] in there."

Y'see, I get so bored so easily. I like to start with a clean slate each time. Sure, I'll have characters drop in and out of books but the main cast of characters always changes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if had the same joe detective guy or gal, I wouldn't write them as well; I wouldn't do as good a job.

When I studied with Nicholas Ray he was always telling us, "If you want to make films, watch a lot of films, but don't just watch films, go take a walk, look at the sky, read a book about meteorology, look at the design of people's shoes. Because all of them are part of filmmaking." So I thought, perfect! That's a good job for me.

I'm inspired by whatever I see, feel, hear about, watch on the TV...anything. It can be something that I really need to get off my chest so I write or something a friend is going through which gets my thoughts going.

You get caught up in a cycle at some point, so I broke the cycle and decided; I'm going to really write a lot of books, because I need to get in touch with that part of myself in order to make more music.

It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.

The longer I've been writing scripts, the more I find that you have to give the artist more leeway or else you'll just be disappointed. You can't force them to draw every image that's in your head. Since I'm a horrific artist, I wouldn't want them to anyway. So I definitely give them a lot more leeway now than I did at the beginning.

The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se.

A comic script is basically a love letter from you to your artist.