Jonathan Carroll Quotes

As an actor, you know, I love not being pigeonholed, which is great. No one really knows who I am. So that's a positive.

While I was writing I assumed it would be published under a pseudonym, and that liberated me: what I wrote was exactly what I wanted to read.

I chose to publish the first 'Shopaholic' book under a pseudonym because I wanted it to be judged on its own merits.

I try not to second-guess editors; they're the clients, and I have no expectation that my strip is going to make it into every paper every day.

The decision of what, when, and how to publish is for editors, not judges.

The experience of writing under a pseudonym was tremendously liberating; I could write what I wanted.

I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.

Limitation of one's freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing. Freedom exists for the sake of love.

The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity. . .

It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years.

But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?" So they dare to be idle, i.e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good.

When I started publishing, I got offers to write for big magazines. But I would always say, "Well, it's not that I don't want to write for these big magazines, but you can't edit it."

I can't help feeling wary when I hear anything said about the masses. First you take their faces from 'em by calling 'em the masses and then you accuse 'em of not having any faces.

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same. More than one person, doubtless like me, writes in order to have no face.

I like being a cog in a wheel. I like being a small aspect of a much bigger thing, and I think my interest in that takes the pressure of myself.

What makes a good editor is staying the hell out of the way as much as possible. ... If you're a DC or Marvel or Dark Horse or BOOM! editor who's assigning work, then if you did your job properly to begin with, then the people you've hired can be trusted to do what they do without excessive meddling. The ideal situation you're shooting for as an editor is to groom a collaborative creative team to the point where their work sails effortlessly through production and the most you have to do is fix the spelling and the commas.

I started out playing in clubs. I always like existing under ground and over ground at the same time.

We are not separate and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way.

As a cartoonist I do what I find funny. As an editor I have a broader approach realizing that humor is inherently subjective and I don't want my preferences to rule out what others might like.

How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one's own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn't this had some effect on my life as a militant--has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation?

I love Merion and I don't even know her last name.

it's more interesting for me to stick things out anonymously. You get more of an honest reaction to what you've done.

For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power.

You should really stay true to your own style. When I first started writing, everybody said to me, 'Your style just isn't right because you don't use the really flowery language that romances have.' My romances - compared to what's out there - are very strange, very odd, very different. And I think that's one of the reasons they're selling.

To express himself well, the artist should be hidden. The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.