Quotes about ink

A collection of quotes on the topic of ink, likeness, paper, writing.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón quote: “Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink.”

Quotes about ink

“The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers and the prayers of the faithful.”

Julius Evola book Revolt Against the Modern World

Source: Revolt Against the Modern World

God, Faith

“They are shaman-artists who constantly strive to look into the blueprint of creation beyond the visual crowd and the noise of superficial details, the one on task to explore and communicate with a primary game of opposite values during composition and construction of a coherent imagery. They paint from both levels, the personal and the intimate and the universal one which emerges from life-giving tension. Every Ink image, every Sumi-e painting, is a unique crossroad of oppositions, of directions, of intentions. They are all constant reminders of the duality of creation and the accuracy of the equation where two equals one.”

Alfred Freddy Krupa (1971) Croatian contemporary painter, master draughtsman, book artist and art teacher, the pioneer of the New Ink Art m…

2010s

Painting, Personality, Game, Communication

“Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

History, Tear

“in black ink my love may still shine bright.”

William Shakespeare book Shakespeare's Sonnets

Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Love

George Orwell book Politics and the English Language

Source: Politics and the English Language (1946)

“The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Feeling

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.”

George Orwell book Politics and the English Language

Politics and the English Language (1946)

Bad luck, People, Suffering, Knowledge

“The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Truth, Way, Thinking, Personality

“Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Music, Water, Singing

“The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone.”

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) German philosopher

Books, Time

“I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Way

“For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Disease, Reading

“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Beauty, Dreams

“You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: The Funny Thing Is...

Books, Idea, Time

“I am probably exaggerating a little, but I owe my equilibrium to ink and paper.”

Julien Green (1900–1998) American author

“They done
Wrong
Like ink from a busted pen
Thrown away 'cause of someone else
Used up
But he come back
Dressed in night
Fine as a king
With his queen
The wrong
Made right
So right.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Night

“When you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”

Christopher Morley book Parnassus on Wheels

Variant: When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean.
Source: Parnassus on Wheels

Love, Life, Friendship, Books

“When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Life, Books

“Hatred is always a sin, my mother told me. Remember that. One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolor everything like a drop of black ink in white milk. I was struck by that and meant to try it, but knew I shouldn’t waste the milk.”

Alice Munro book Vintage Munro

Source: Vintage Munro

Soul

“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Pudd'nhead Wilson and Other Tales

History

“Ink, a Drug.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Bend Sinister

Source: Bend Sinister

“Then proudly smiled that old man
To see the eager lad
Rush madly for his pen and ink
And for his blotting-pad –
But, when he thought of publishing,
His face grew stern and sad.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur, last stanza
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

Sadness, Smile

“"Our Second Experiment", the Professor announced, as Bruno returned to his place, still thoughtfully rubbing his elbows, "is the production of that seldom-seen-but-greatly-to-be-admired phenomenon, Black Light! You have seen White Light, Red Light, Green Light, and so on: but never, till this wonderful day, have any eyes but mine seen Black Light! This box", carefully lifting it upon the table, and covering it with a heap of blankets, "is quite full of it. The way I made it was this - I took a lighted candle into a dark cupboard and shut the door. Of course the cupboard was then full of Yellow Light. Then I took a bottle of Black ink, and poured it over the candle: and, to my delight, every atom of the Yellow Light turned Black! That was indeed the proudest moment of my life! Then I filled a box with it. And now - would anyone like to get under the blankets and see it?"Dead silence followed this appeal: but at last Bruno said "I'll get under, if it won't jingle my elbows."Satisfied on this point, Bruno crawled under the blankets, and, after a minute or two, crawled out again, very hot and dusty, and with his hair in the wildest confusion."What did you see in the box?" Sylvie eagerly enquired."I saw nuffin!" Bruno sadly replied. "It were too dark!""He has described the appearance of the thing exactly!"”

Lewis Carroll book Sylvie and Bruno

the Professor exclaimed with enthusiasm. "Black Light, and Nothing, look so extremely alike, at first sight, that I don't wonder he failed to distinguish them! We will now proceed to the Third Experiment."</p>
Source: Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), Chapter 21: The Professor's Lecture

Life, Way, Light, Silence

“An individual who isn't worth the ink it would take to write about him.”

Sharon Stone (1958) American actress and fashion model

About Steven Seagal <br class="br"> Sharon Stone tells all and then some http://web.archive.org/web/20030220075717/http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/08/13/stone/

“All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Scholars http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1682/, st. 2 <br class="br">The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)

People, Shoe, Way, Thinking

“Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called him Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Many Long Years Ago (1945), The Tale of Custard the Dragon

Dogs

“I started to "write" even before I knew the alphabet. I would dip a pen in ink and scribble. I also liked to draw — horses, houses, dogs. The Sabbath was an ordeal for me, because it is forbidden to write on that day.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

"A Day of Pleasure" (1996)

Dogs, Horse, Drawing, Housing

“The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

" My Father's Suitcase", Nobel Prize for Literature lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2006/pamuk-lecture_en.html (December 7, 2006).

Love, Life, People, Books

“Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years.”

Christopher Morley book The Haunted Bookshop

The Haunted Bookshop (1919)
Context: Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.

“Novels aren’t just happy escapes; they are slivers of people’s souls, nailed to the pages, dripping ink from veins of wood pulp. Reading the right one at the right time can make all the difference.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

People, Soul, Time, Reading

“… there's not enough ink and paper to say all I wanted.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

“To call that writing, madam, is an insult to quills and ink across the world.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: To Catch an Heiress

World

“Wine can be a better teacher than ink, and banter is often better than books”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

Source: The Fry Chronicles

Books, Teachers, Wine

“Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.”

Mark Strand (1934–2014) Canadian-American poet, essayist, translator

Source: Selected Poems

Happiness

“Memory is more indelible than ink.”

Anita Loos (1889–1981) Actress, novelist, screenwriter, TV producer

Memory

“Honey, I plan to marry you the moment the ink is dry on that death certificate.”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

Death

“That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Secret

“You have ink in your blood, boy, and no help for it. Books will never be just a business to you.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ink and Bone

Books, Boy, Business, Help

“What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.”

Cynthia Ozick (1928) American writer

Childhood

“Hours later the blank sheet still stared at me, and I beat my fist against the desk in fury and fustration, striking it so hard my hand bled. That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Secret

“The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Literature

“I love the smell of book ink in the morning.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Love, Books

“A drop of ink may make a million think.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Thinking

“i sometimes felt as if these marks on my body were a kind of code, which blossomed, then faded, like invisible ink held to a candle. But if they were a code, who held the key to it? I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

“My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn't write
What the night pencilled in”

Leonard Cohen book Book of Longing

Source: Book of Longing

Night

“Waiting for the pen to dry up so he can start fresh with thoughts that are worth new ink.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

Waiting

“How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“My children were all made from paper and printer's ink…”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

Children

“A book unopened alters not the ink on its pages. What is there is there.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

Books

“Must stop. This ink is amazing, it really doesn't smear, even when you cry on it”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

Cry

“Now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

World, Suffering

“A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Feeling

“And an equation is the same whether it's written in red or green ink”

Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy

Source: A Suitable Boy

“If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Do I Come Here Often

World, Light, Sun, Night

“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Thinking

“The most important story we'll ever write in life is our own—not with ink, but with our daily choices.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Life

“The visions are fragmented and a dark cloud spreads like spilt ink across the pages of possible futures.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Lirael

Future

“I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

Love, Life, Books

“There was that special smell made up of paper, ink, and dust; the busy hush; the endless luxury of thousands of unread books. Best of all was the eager itch of anticipation as you went out the door with your arms loaded down with books.”

Zilpha Keatley Snyder (1927–2014) American writer of children's fiction

Source: The Velvet Room

Books, Business

“Apart from the faint odor of ink that pervaded the scene, it might have been real.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

“It is the world, my boy," he said. "All the World, in ink and blood, vellum and parchment, leather and hide. It is the World, and it is yours to save or lose.”

James A. Owen book Here, There Be Dragons

Source: Here, There Be Dragons

World, Boy

“Imagine your brain as a canister filled with ink,
Now think of your body as the pen where the ink resides.
Fuse the two - Kapow! What are you now?
You're the human magic marker, won't you please surprise my eyes?”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, S.C.I.E.N.C.E. (1997)

Imagination, Thinking

“When life gives you lemons you squeeze them, hard. Make invisible ink. Make an acid poison. Fling it in their eyes.”

Austin Grossman book Soon I Will Be Invincible

Source: Soon I Will Be Invincible (2007), Ch. 3: Riddle Me This

Life

“There is only as much space, only as much time, only as much desire, only as many words, only as many pages, only as much ink to accept all of us at light-speed hurrying into the Promised Land of oblivion that is waiting for us sooner or later.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Silent Equality http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21405/Silent_Equality <br class="br">From the poems written in English

Light, Time, Waiting, Speed

“A fish swims through the sea
While the sea is in a certain sense,
Contained within the fish!
Oh, what am I to think
Of what the writing of a thousand lifetimes
Could not explain
If all the forest trees were pens
And all the oceans - ink?”

Aaron Weiss

The Dryness and the Rain.
Brother, Sister (2006)

Thinking, Sense, Fish, Tree

“The sky is now indelible ink,
The branches reft asunder;
But you and I we do not shrink;
We love the lovely thunder.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Many Long Years Ago (1945), A Watched Example Never Boils

Love

“Born to a race of heroes, you, my love,
discard your brush and ink for tools of war.
You vow to capture citadels for the throne—
your sword will spare no foe of Heaven's sway.”

Đặng Trần Côn (1710–1745) writer

Source: Chinh phụ ngâm, Lines 17–20

Love, War

“Things which seem in poor taste: too many personal effects cluttering up the place where one is sitting; too many brushes in an ink-box; too many Buddhas in a family temple; too many stones and plants in a garden; too many children in a house; too many words on meeting someone; too many meritorious deeds recorded in a petition. Things which are not offensive, no matter how numerous: books in a book cart, rubbish in a rubbish heap.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

72
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)

Children, Books, Family, Housing

“Death is not necessarily an old and withered book with dry pages. It can be a thousand leaves of strong and shining text on a powerful body, held erect on the vertebrae of a strong spine. The heart hardly breathes because quietus has been reached, the torso is like a rock, the legs are rooted, the ink is dependable. If the words of death should be considered faded and sere -- where could be the dignity in dying?”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the thirteenth book, "The Book of the Dead"
The Pillow Book

Death, Books, Strong, Heart

“My brother works for a forestry commission. He writes only in green ink to persuade his bosses to make it a standard ecological colour for all forestry business. I asked him what colour ink he would use if he gave up eating whale meat and worked for a whaling company. He said whales were colour blind.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

One of the calligraphers
The Pillow Book

Business

“When the mirror meets with an ugly woman, when a rare ink-stone finds a vulgar owner, and when a good sword is in the hands of a common general, there is utterly nothing to be done about it.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 317

““I thought I would be safe here.”
“You are.” For the first time, he touched her, touched her hand. “Safe from everything but paper and ink. Please. Put those down.”
“Paper and ink.” She clutched the books to her ample chest. “They’re not nothing, Alec. They’re pretty much everything to me: the embodiment of ideas, of thought—of free and open thought. Of inquiry and supposition. All of it.””

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

Part IV, Chapter V (p. 386)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

Books, Idea, Time

“I cried out. I turned the pages, one after the other, in a frenzy. I could not believe what I saw, would not believe it. For the pages of the book were blank.
Oh, yes, there had been writing, this much I could see, but the inks had faded. Now there were only faint smudges and marks here and there on the yellowness. And I could tell nothing from them…
It came to me, as I walked, how bitter the irony of the Book had been which had said: Herein the Truth. For it had a truth of its own in its bleached barrenness. What was truth except something which faded, lost its shape, grew unreadable and indistinguishable, at last a blank page for men to write on what they wished.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part II “The Edge of the Sea”, Chapter 2 (p. 357)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Men, Truth, Books

“Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn't come from God's Word, it comes from that cult-like, pagan religion. Now you say, "Pastor, how can you say such a thing? That is such an indictment of the Catholic Church. After all the Catholic Church talks about God and the Bible and Jesus and the Blood of Christ and Salvation."Isn't that the genius of Satan? If you want to counterfeit a dollar bill, you don't do it with purple paper and red ink, you're not going to fool anybody with that. But if you want to counterfeit money, what you do is make it look closely related to the real thing as possible.And that's what Satan does with counterfeit religion. He uses, he steals, he appropriates all of the symbols of true biblical Christianity, and he changes it just enough in order to cause people to miss eternal life.”

Robert Jeffress (1955) Pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas

The Response, American Family Association prayer rally, Reliant Stadium, Houston, , quoted in * 2011-10-08
Jeffress Says Satan Is Behind Roman Catholicism
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jeffress-says-satan-behind-roman-catholicism

Life, Money, God, People

“In the world, America stands for — and works for — the right of all men to govern themselves through free, uninhibited elections. An ink bottle broken against an American Embassy, a fire set in an American library, an insult committed against our American flag, anywhere in the world, does far less injury to our country and our cause than the discriminatory denial of the right of any American citizen at home to vote on the basis of race or color.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)

Men, World, Color, Home

“Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans outline their territories by ink excretions on paper.”

Robert Anton Wilson book Prometheus Rising

Source: Prometheus Rising (1983), Ch. 4 : The Anal Emotional Territiorial Circuit, p. 68

Animals

“Much time was wasted and ink spilled in the late 1960s and early 1970s trying to interpret the lagged effect of prices on wages as reflecting adaptive lags in the formation of expectations. But if we have learned anything from the new Keynesian economics of Fischer, Taylor, Blanchard, and their younger followers, it is that price and wage inertia is compatible with rational expectations.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Robert J. Gordon, The Phillips Curve Now and Then. (1990).

Learning, Time

“It was important for me to get involved with ‘Ink, Not Mink’ just because of what it’s about. It’s about really talking about the cruelty to animals, what they have to go through. I’m most definitely a big fan of ink, as you can see, and … I would rather wear ink than mink any day.”

Antoine Bethea (1984) American football player, defensive back, safety

"Colts Safety Antoine Bethea Signs With PETA’s No-Fur Team" https://www.peta.org/media/news-releases/colts-safety-antoine-bethea-signs-petas-fur-team/, interview with PETA (18 December 2013).

Animals

“Much as constitutional guarantees of press freedom do little good for prospective publishers if they do not have access to paper or ink, the right to aid in dying is strikingly useless if nobody is willing to help.”

Jacob M. Appel (1973) American author, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic

Big Sky Dilemma: Must Doctors Help Their Patients Die? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel/big-sky-dilemma-must-doct_b_275034.html, The Huffington Post (2009-09-02)

Freedom, Help

“I stopped reading the comics page a long time ago. It seems that whoever is in charge of what to put on that page is given an edict that states: “For God’s sake, try to be as bland as possible and by no means offend any one!” Thus, whenever something like Doonesbury would come along, it would be continually censored and, if lucky, eventually banished to the editorial pages. The message was clear: Keep it simple, keep it cute, and don’t be challenging, outrageous or political.
And keep it white!
It’s odd that considering all the black ink that goes into making the comics section (and color on Sundays) that you rarely see any black faces on that page. Well, maybe it’s not so odd after all, considering the makeup of most newsrooms in our country. It is even more stunning when you consider that in many of our large cities like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago where the white population is barely a third of the overall citizenry, the comics pages seem to be one of the last vestiges of the belief that white faces are just…well, you know…so much more happy and friendly and funny!
Of course, the real funnies are on the front pages of most papers these days. That’s where you can see a lot of black faces. The media loves to cover black people on the front page. After all, when you live in a society that will lock up 30 percent of all black men at some time in their lives and send more of them to prison than to college, chances are a fair number of those black faces will end up in the newspaper.
Oops, there I go playing the race card. You see, in America these days, we aren’t supposed to talk about race. We have been told to pretend that things have gotten better, that the old days of segregation and cross burnings are long gone, and that no one needs to talk about race again because, hey, we fixed that problem.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, the “whites only” signs are down, but they have just been replaced by invisible ones that, if you are black, you see hanging in front of the home loan department of the local bank, across the entrance of the ritzy suburban or on the doors of the U. S. Senate”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

100 percent Caucasian and going strong!
Foreword to "The Boondocks Treasury: a Right to be Hostile" by Aaron McGruder, (2003).
2003

Love, Men, God, People

“As paint I use lightfast printing ink, usually pure, but also mixed. Mixing is not difficult at all, it but can happen in very different ways. Secret means are not applied, but I can not work on them, except in solitude (at sunshine). No one works in this way. I believe that no one else can obtain the same color effects, except after a lot of practice and experience. Sometimes one print goes up to 50 times under the printing-press. [I make] Never more than one piece per day.”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands):Als verf gebruik ik lichtechte drukinkt, meestal puur, ook wel gemengd. Het mengen is wel geen kunst maar kan zeer verschillend gebeuren. Geheime middelen worden niet toegepast, maar ik kan er niet aan werken, dan alleen in eenzaamheid (bij zonneschijn). Door niemand wordt op deze wijze gewerkt., ik geloof dat ook niemand anders dezelfde kleureffecten zou kunnen krijgen dan na veel oefening en ervaring. Soms gaat één druk tot 50 maal onder de pers. Nooit meer dan één ex. Per dag.
Quote from Werkman's letter (6.) to August Henkels, 24 Jan. 1941; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 134
1940's

Secret, Color, Way, Solitude

“My secret arsenal is an infinite, ageless ink well. It's a fountain of youth and a patriot's weapon of choice.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, A Crow Left of the Murder... (2004)

Secret, Youth

“Pro-slavery impulse still governs the Democratic Party, the party of government sinecures. It is the party that wants to use political power to tax us not for any common good, but to eat while we work. Consider the Great Society and its legacy. In the fall of 1964, I was on the speech-writing staff of the Goldwater campaign. In September and October I went on a number of forays to college campuses, where I debated spokesmen for our opponents. My argument always started from here. In 1964 the economy, thanks to the Kennedy tax cuts, was growing at the remarkable annual rate of four percent. But federal revenues were growing at 20 percent; five times as fast. The real issue in the election, I said, was what was to happen to that cornucopia of revenue. Barry Goldwater would use it to reduce the deficit and to further reduce taxes; Lyndon Johnson would use it to start vast new federal programs. At that point I could not say what programs, but I knew that the real purpose of them would be to create a new class of dependents upon the Democratic Party. The ink was hardly dry on the election returns before Johnson invented the war on poverty; and proved my prediction correct. One did not need to be cynical to see that the poor were not a reason for the expansion of bureaucracy; the expansion of bureaucracy was a reason for the poor. Every failure to reduce poverty was always represented as another reason to increase expenditures on the poor. The ultimate beneficiary was the Democratic Party. Every federal bureaucrat became in effect a precinct captain, delivering the votes of his constituents. His job was to enlarge the pool of constituents. But every increase in that pool meant a diminution of our property and our freedom.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)

War, Failure, Freedom, Time

“The subject reports itself, it is never looked for. Afterwards a small drawing will follow for the color-planes which are determined immediately. These colors will be printed by large logs and updated and enlivened with the hand-roller. For pressing I use an old hand-press with lever (from c. 1800)... Sometimes it is necessary to press heavily, other times only very light. Sometimes one half of the block is rolled in [with ink] bold, the other half only skimpy. By first printing sometimes the first layer of paint on a piece of paper, a gentle tint appears which is then printed on the original. Another time I print the first print of the paper back on the original... As soon as the color-planes have been applied, the first state is reached, so to say..
.. Of course all kinds of side-steps can be made, while working. In case of enlivening the picture - both in terms of color or decoration - the main goal I always keep in mind.”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): Het onderwerp meldt zichzelf en wordt nooit gezocht, daarna volgt een kleine tekening voor de kleurvlakken die meteen vaststaan. Deze kleuren worden met groote houtblokken gedrukt en met de handrol bijgewerkt en verlevendigt. Als pers gebruik ik een oude handpers met hefboom (c. 1800).. .Soms is het noodig zwaar te drukken, soms heel licht; soms wordt de ene helft van het blok vet ingerold [met inkt], de andere helft schraal, ook wordt door eerst op een stuk papier de eerste laag verf af te drukken een lichte tint gekregen die dan op het origineel afgedrukt wordt, een andere keer druk ik de eerste druk van het papier weer op het origineel af.. Zijn de kleurvlakken aangebracht, dan is als het ware de eerste staat bereikt..
.Het spreekt vanzelf dat onder het werk verschillende zijsprongetjes gemaakt kunnen worden. Ter verlevendiging, zowel wat kleur als wat versiering aangaat: het hoofddoel staat steeds voor oogen.
Quote from Werkman's letter (6.) to August Henkels, 24 Jan. 1941; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 134
1940's

Color, Light, Appearance, Time

“A few things have been eating at me. Was Robin Hood's mother known as Mother Hood? How do you know when you run out of invisible ink? Why does sour cream have an expiration date?”

Larry Andersen (1953) American baseball player

"Now Some Comic Relief" (1989)

“Forensic procedure is an art form, nothing less. No, I'll go further: it's higher, more refined, than any art form. Why? Because it's real. Take just one aspect of it—say the diagrams: with all their outlines, arrows and shaded blocks they look like abstract paintings, avant-garde ones from the last century—dances of shapes and flows as delicate and skilful as the markings on butterflies' wings. But they're not abstract at all. They're records of atrocities. Each line, each figure, every angle—the ink itself vibrates with an almost intolerable violence, darkly screaming from the silence of white paper: something has happened here, someone has died.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 11.

Art, Silence, Dance, Painting

“One can derive the same fun from print-making as from making mud pies and great subtlety can be achieved through the use of transparent inks, half-tone screens and even accidental colour combinations, which is often where the art hides.”

Ralph Steadman book The Joke's Over

Own Goals, p. 314
The Joke's Over (2006)

Art

“If the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be…. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers and actuaries, were born, and died. Still official routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies." In the reign of George III an inquiry was made by some revolutionary spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who live in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof, the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night…. The great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the sun, moon, and stars.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

"Administrative Reform" (June 27, 1855) Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Speeches Literary and Social by Charles Dickens https://books.google.com/books?id=bT5WAAAAcAAJ (1870) pp. 133-134

Wisdom, People, Books, Age

“The blackest Ink of Fate, sure, was my Lot,
And, when she writ my Name, she made a blot.”

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687) English statesman and poet

Pretty-man, Act III, sc. iv
The Rehearsal (1671)

Fate

“King Ink feels like a bug,
Swimming in a soup-bowl.”

Nick Cave book King Ink

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), King Ink

Feeling

“The ceiling fell? The ink ran dry? A student dared to smile?
Of every new disaster
I prove myself the master
By sending out more circulars, more circulars to file!
A missing kid? A kissing kid? A paper on the floor?
For every major crisis
One remedy suffices:
More circulars, more circulars, to put into a drawer!A crowded cafeteria?
A substitute's hysteria?
A visitor from Syria?
A missing Book Receipt?I merely send out circulars
To add to other circulars
To add to other circulars
Numerical and neat!”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part III, ch. 16 (Paul Barringer)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

Books, Smile, Kiss

“In each and every one of us lies a message. It is inscribed in an ancient code, its beginnings lost in the mists of time. Decrypted, the message contains instructions on how to make a human being. Nobody wrote the message; nobody invented the code. They came into existence spontaneously. Their designer was Mother Nature herself, working only within the scope of her immutable laws and capitalizing on the vagaries of chance. The message isn't written in ink or type, but in atoms, strung together in an elaborately arranged sequence to form DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid. It is the most extraordinary molecule on Earth.”

Paul Davies (1946) British physicist

Source: The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life (1999), Ch. 1: 'The Meaning of Life', p. 41

Law, Nature, Chance, Time

“Because, Renisenb, it is so easy and it costs so little labour to write down ten bushels of barley, or a hundred head of cattle, or ten fields of spelt - and the thing that is written will come to seem like the real thing, and so the writer and the scribe will come to despise the man who ploughs the fields and reaps the barley and raises the cattle - but all the same the fields and the cattle are real - they are not just marks of inks on papyrus. And when all the records and all the papyrus rolls are destroyed and the scribes are scattered, the men who toil and reap will go on, and Egypt will still live.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Hori
(1945)

Men

“During the four hundred years of Han supremacy the march of civilization went steadily forward. Paper and ink were invented, and also the camel's-hair brush, both of which gave a great impetus to the arts of writing and painting.”

Herbert Giles (1845–1935) British sinologist and diplomat

The Civilization of China https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2076/2076-h/2076-h.htm (1911), p. 37

Art, Painting

“Modern poets put a lot of water into their ink.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Neuere Poeten tun viel Wasser in die Tinte.
Maxim 749, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: Modern poets mix a lot of water with their ink.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Water

“Hugo [Claus], Now you should see my recent works. A drawing in ink, three pencil drawings and two sketches in oil-paint: a still-life and a landscape in the strongest colors you can imagine. I still have to work on the landscape, but I really think it will be the best of my paintings till now.... but the happiest thing is, I have acquired much more freedom.”

Roger Raveel (1921–2013) painter

version in original Flemish (citaat van Roger Raveel, in het Vlaams): Hugo [Claus], nu zoudt U eens moeten mijn laatste werk zien, een pentekening, drie potloodtekeningen en twee studies met olieverf: een stilleven en een landschap in de hevigste kleuren die Ge U kunt indenken. Aan dat landschap moet ik nog werken maar ik denk dat het mijn beste werk zal zijn, van mijn schilderwerk, en drie tekeningen vind ik mijn beste maar het gelukkigste is dat ik een veel grotere vrijheid heb verworven.
Quote of Raveel, in a letter to his friend Hugo Claus, from Machelen aan de Leie, 20-24 March 1948; as cited in Hugo Claus, Roger Raveel; Brieven 1947 – 1962, ed. Katrien Jacobs, Ludion; Gent Belgium, 2007 - ISBN 978-90-5544-665-0, p. 50 (translation: Fons Heijnsbroek)
1945 - 1960

Life, Color, Imagination, Thinking