If I have free time I try and stay away from working at all. I work so much that I savour every second that I have free and I try not to draw at all. You'll never see me draw when I'm having a coffee or something.
Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If in your bold creative way you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.
Every script has things that would draw me away or draw me towards it. But I just try and choose as wisely as possible - when I get to choose.
This ongoing coexistence which makes life sensational. The eyes have this ability to flip around what they see from one second to another, to see something as an object, and then as a design. That's really liberating, and I try to convey that in my work, that your eyes are free and you are free to use them.
I sometimes have to think about that because if I think about these five things and think of them all, I'll drop the balls, so I really have to prioritize and use every free second I have and maximize it. I wake up early, try to get sleep, but try to write for at least three hours every day. A really nice day for me is writing ten hours. I love that. Hasn't been a lot of that recently, but every free second I have I'm doing that.
In everything I do, having it be important or try to express something or it having the ability to demystify something or draw attention to the nuance of something is always interesting to me.
Making art, I try to just gently persist, instead of having freak-outs where I'm like, Oh, my god, I'll never draw again. You are going to draw again, so you might as well relax.
I try to keep my routine as consistent as possible. I try to lift every single day. It's not powerlifting. It's not lifting to become the strongest man in the world. It's lifting just to stay in shape. Stay lean. Stay injury free.
Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.
Everything in life, is a question of drawing a life, John, and you have to decide for yourself where to draw it. You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn't work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.
I don't draw every day. I tend to draw intensely during certain periods of time. I draw to amuse myself on occasion, when I am bored and drawing is the only fun to be had.
The single aim of my life is that every child is:
free to be a child,
free to grow and develop,
free to eat, sleep, see daylight,
free to laugh and cry,
free to play,
free to learn, free to go to school, and above all, free to dream.
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."
I try not to be too precious about my writing, and I try to be willing to walk away from it for a few hours when something's not working, to let things percolate a bit. I try not to hide myself away from life too much, because I think that's a risky thing for a writer to do.
Draw, draw, hundreds of drawings. Try to remain humble. Smartness kills everything.
I try to present something that is full of time. Not timeless, but full of time. I never like a work where we try to update it, but it's still not interesting to see a work that is dated. If one is successful, then a work can be full of time. And time is very complex.
I want to represent... to the kids to draw strength from me. So they can see that everybody goes through something, but you can rise up and do your best. Just try.