Scott McCloud · 215 pages
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“Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn’t grow out of either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and reproduction.”
― Scott McCloud, quote from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
“I may have drawn an axe being raised in this example, but I'm not the one who let it drop or decided how hard the blow, or who screamed, or why. That, dear reader, was your special crime. Each of you was committing it in your own style.”
― Scott McCloud, quote from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
“By stripping down an image to its essential "meaning", an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can't.”
― Scott McCloud, quote from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
“Our perception of "reality" is an act of faith based on mere fragments.”
― Scott McCloud, quote from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
“The natural world creates great beauty every day, yet the only rules of composition it follows are those of function and chance.”
― Scott McCloud, quote from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
“I guess the basic difference is that animation is sequential in time but in spatially juxtaposed as comics are.
Each successive frame of a movie is projected on exactly the same space--the screen--while each frame of comics must occupy a different space.
Space does for comics what time does for film!”
― Scott McCloud, quote from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
“Through traditional realism, the comics artist can portray the world without--
--and through the cartoon, the world within.”
― Scott McCloud, quote from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
“This phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole has a name. It's called closure.
In our daily lives, we often commit closure, mentally completing that which is incomplete based on past experience.”
― Scott McCloud, quote from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
“Think of your face as a mask. That's what it is, after all. A mask. Facing outward. Worn from the day you were born. Slave to your every mental command. Seen by everyone you meet. But never by you. Open its eyes now. Just think it. The mask will obey.”
― Scott McCloud, quote from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
“Just as pictures and the intervals between them create the illusion of time through closure, words introduce time by representing that which can only exist in time--sound.”
― Scott McCloud, quote from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
“The panel acts as a sort of general indicator that time or space is being divided. The durations of that time and the dimensions of that space are defined more by contents of the panel than by the panel itself.”
― Scott McCloud, quote from Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
“I am here because of a certain man. I came to retrace his steps. Perhaps to see if there were not some alternate course. What was here to be found was not a thing. Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place. And that is what was to be found here. The corrido. That tale. And like all corridos it ultimately told one story only, for there is only one to tell.
The cats shifted and stirred, the fire creaked in the stove. Outside in the abandoned village the profoundest silence.
What is the story? the boy said.
In the town of Caborca on the Altar River there was a man who lived there who was an old man. He was born in Caborca and in Caborca he died. Yet he lived once in this town, in Huisiachepic.
What does Caborca know of Huisiachepic, Huisiachepic of Caborca? They are different worlds, you must agree. Yet even so there is but one world and everything that is imaginable is necessary to it. For this world also which seems to us a thing of stone and flower and blood is not a thing at all but a tale. And all in it is a tale and each tale the sum of all lesser tales and yet they are the selfsame tale and contain as well all else within them. So everything is necessary. Every least thing. This is a hard lesson. Nothing can be dispensed with. Nothing despised. Because the seems are hid from us, you see. The joinery. The way in which the world is made. We have no way to tell what might stand and what might fall. And those seams that are hid from us are of course in the tale itself and the tale had no abode or place of being except in the telling only and there it lives and makes its home and therefore we can never be done with the telling. Of the telling there is no end. And whether in Caborca or Huisiachepic or in whatever other place by whatever other name or by no name at all I say again all tales are one. Rightly heard all tales are one.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Crossing
“They are sparkly,” Nawat said. “The griffins shed them. I thought if I brought you a present that was made of discarded things, no one would punish you for having them.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Trickster's Choice
“What?" he asked.
"I don't know. Just thinking about flowers. And impressing people. I mean, how strange is it that we bring plant sex organs to people we're attracted to? What's up with that? It's a weird sign of affection."
His dark eyes lit up, like he'd just discovered something surprising and delightful. "Is it any weirder than giving chocolate, which is supposed to be an aphrodisiac? Or what about wine? A 'romantic' drink that really just succeeds in lowering the other person's inhibitions."
"Hmmm, It's like people are trying to be both subtle and blatant at the same time. Like, they won't actually go up and say, 'Hey, I like you, lets get together.' Instead, they're like, 'Here, have some plant genitalia and aphrodisiacs.”
― Richelle Mead, quote from Storm Born
“Even the best of us are thrown off some- times.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Sign of Four
“Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty that depends on fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. You should be known for the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. 1 PETER 3:3-4”
― Francine Rivers, quote from An Echo in the Darkness
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