Top 40 Adrian Tomine Quotes

I love the idea of trying to do the work of old-fashioned novelists of plotting and of really making you curious about what’s going to happen next and all that, but also trying to load it up with your weird thoughts and opinions.

When I’m sitting at my drafting table in my studio, I could really be anywhere.

My 20s were peaceful, privileged, but still I felt the desire to write angsty dramas.

I do think that many Americans have a limited view of what constitutes Japanese cartooning based on what gets translated, so it’s great to see an increase in diversity.

It’s absolutely chilling to think that I’ve been working on a comic-book series called ‘Optic Nerve’ since I was sixteen.

There’s never been a moment where I sat down at my drawing board and thought, ‘I’m a pro!’

There’s a part of me that feels like it gets really frustrating to keep working in the manner that I made the book ‘Shortcomings,’ where everything is pretty accurate to the real world.

There have been a handful of assignments over the years that I’ve had to turn down due to time constraints, and I was fairly envious when I saw the finished product, beautifully illustrated by someone else.

To me, one of the big fears of doing a big huge graphic novel is locking yourself into one style and getting halfway through it and going, ‘Oh I made the wrong choice,’ which is a recurring nightmare I have.

What was a very private childhood hobby turned into a very a public, professional job, and I think that there’s a lot of inhibition that can grow from that.

I’m Japanese, but restaurants in my hometown served the most sanitized versions of California rolls. I grew up eating a lot of Japanese food at home that my parents or grandparents made.

The most impactful comics that I’ve read are the ones where the artists swung for the bleachers and tried to immerse you in their world.

The basic work schedule for me is whenever I’m not doing anything more important, like taking care of my kids or something. So, it’s most of the day, five days a week, most evenings and sometimes on the weekends.

I’ve always published a range of responses to my work in the letters section of my comic book.

I had relatives who would go to Japan and bring back random stuff they bought at the airport or whatever – ‘Ultraman’ and ‘Speed Racer,’ stuff like that.

‘Peanuts’ is a life-long influence, going back to before I could even read.

The type of cartooning that I think is generally referred to as ‘alternative’ or ‘underground’ is usually – the distinction is usually in terms of whether it’s made by one person, the entire thing is done by one hand or more of a production line process, which is how the comics that we grew up reading were made.

I’m an unabashed fan of ‘The New Yorker.’ I do feel proud when I see my artwork in there.

I was just taking my sketchbook to Kinko’s and making photocopies and hand-assembling them – folding them over and stapling them.

Ninety percent of the time when I’m working, there’s this very palpable sensation that I’m doing everything wrong and should just give up.

If anything, I feel a bit of pressure to write about less disenfranchised people, because I’d probably sell more books that way and would’ve already had some hot property that I could’ve sold to Hollywood.

There’s a lot of books that I’ve purchased simply because of the cover design. On the other hand, there’s certain books that, even if I’m very curious about the content, I can’t bring myself to buy if I really dislike the cover.

A lot of my fears come out in my work rather than life.

I’ve always liked the tradition of publishing work serially in the comic-book ‘pamphlet’ format and then collecting that work in book form, so I’ve just stuck with it.

Fortunately, I’ve never had to be too critical of my own work, because the world is critical enough.

The comics work is very slow, and it basically involves working for sometimes years in isolation and not knowing how the work is going to be received.

New York is a brutally expensive place to live, and the kind of person who might have the dedication and esoteric taste to make the comics that I would really love is finding it more relaxing to live elsewhere.

On a very basic, concrete level, there have been times when my work, regardless of the content, has harmed relationships because I made that work such a primary priority in my life.

My responsibility is to present things in a way that is realistic and true to the multifaceted world I’ve known… This is how I think the world is, not how it should be.

When I started publishing my work, one of the biggest surprises to me was the recurring question about my background and why I wasn’t doing more stories about Asian-Americans.

I think the response I get to one ‘New Yorker’ cover outweighs five books that I publish.

For a long time, I was very resistant to the idea of online publication or even e-books or something like that.

I hated ‘Dilbert.’

In general, daily strips were just a regular part of my childhood. So even if I wasn’t a huge fan of most of those strips, I still read them religiously every morning while I ate my cereal.

I enjoy getting any kind of mail. Like, for me, like, the more interesting a letter is, I just get more excited, and I know that this going to be great for my friends who are looking forward to reading that in my comic.

I would honestly be elated if I could wave a magic wand and eradicate my back catalog and then have a fresh crack at some of those ideas.

Even though I’m usually not conscious of it, I think drawing has always served a sort of therapeutic purpose in my life. There’s something about the process of translating the messy chaos of real life into a clean, simple drawing that’s always been comforting to me.

I used to live in Chris Rock’s former apartment. I’ve got some junk mail for him if he wants it.

I had a mundane, happy childhood, without much struggle.

I was thinking about what it was like for my parents to have a strange kid with a hobby or a pursuit that maybe they weren’t that familiar with. It must have been a strange experience – nerve-wracking, in some ways.