A Quote by Marjorie Liu

I don't think of myself as having any freedom when it comes to how 'Monstress' is structured and how the story is going because a comic book has to be even more tightly structured than a novel, because there is no room for mistakes. Once the art is done, the art is done.
I would rather read a poorly structured story that has fresh ideas than a tightly structured one with cliches.
I've done some stuff with Thomas Jane and Tim Bradstreet in the comic world and it was interesting to me how close to a screenplay a comic can be. Certainly a four issue comic can be a four act structured screenplay and so I would totally be for that.
I started resenting how much art robs from life. I'd go to a party and I couldn't enjoy myself, even sexually. All I could think was how I was going to reinvent the experience into a piece of art.
I taught myself how to draw, and I soon found out it was what I really wanted to do. I didn't think I was going to create any great masterpieces like Rembrandt or Gauguin. I thought comics was a common form of art, and strictly American in my estimation, because America was the home of the common man - and show me the common man that can't do a comic. So comics is an American form of art that anyone can do with a pencil and paper.
I don't think about myself having any form or style. Although it does tend to be rather realistic; not too stylised at all, it's not as exaggerated as comic art normally is. I try to go for a more realistic looking approach to my art.
All organizations are hierarchical. At each level people serve under those above them. An organization is therefore a structured institution. If it is not structured, it is a mob. Mobs do not get things done, they destroy things.
I have enjoyed teaching most of the times that I have done it. I also like being by myself and making things and performing, so much that if I hadn't needed an income I probably wouldn't have done much teaching. Having said that, I think working with others, having to come up with art projects, and learning how to present your ideas in a clear way, to adults and/or kids is always interesting and rewarding.
And I do think that good art - the art that tends to last - is that art that hits human beings on several different levels at once because everybody's different. Some people approach art through their emotions, others through their head, and the art that can appeal to all of those levels is more likely to reach more people. Having more people see the work doesn't necessarily mean better art but it stands a better chance of lasting.
I guess maybe my art can be said to be a protest. I see things a certain way, and as an artist I’m privileged in that arena to protest or say publicly what I’m thinking about. Maybe the strongest work I’ve done is because it was done with indignation. Considering myself as a feminist, I don’t want my work to be a reaction to what male art might be or what art with a capital A would be. I just want it to be art. In a convoluted way, I am protesting- protesting the usual way art is looked at, being shoved into a period or category.
Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?
If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.
I think that once you're able to sort of get in line with who and how you relate to the world, you'll become closer to this index that I'm referring to. Because what you want is this card that relates to that book. What you want is this human that relates to this world, rather than having this art school society scattering that point of view somewhere in between. It becomes diffused. And that level of clarity, I think, was gained at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
... Oceanic malaise. I never saw anyone reading anything more demanding than a comic book. I never heard any youth express an interest in science or art. No one even talked politics. It was all idleness, and whenever I asked someone a question, no matter how simple, no matter how well the person spoke English, there was always a long pause before I got a reply, and I found these Pacific pauses maddening. And there was giggling but no humor - no wit. It was just foolery.
I used to love reading, but since I've started writing, it's harder for me to immerse, because I spend so much time looking at how the story is structured and trying to see what the author is doing behind the curtain.
I think there's much more privileging of the new in art. I think people want to think they privilege the new in writing, but I agree with Virginia Woolf. She wrote a great essay called "Craftsmanship" about how difficult it is to use new words. It's really hard, but you see them coming in because obviously, if you're going to write... I mean, even to write "cell phone" in a novel - it's so boring.
I have a feeling that art is something you do for yourself, and that any time you turn your decisions over to someone else you're postponing at best, your own development. The atmosphere of the workshop should be that of trying out one's own work and accepting the signals from others but not accepting the dictation of others because that is a violation of the spirit of art. Art can't be done by somebody else, it has got to be done by the artist.
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