artists-from-england

"We weren't allowed to listen to music, no TV – I didn't know who Madonna was until I was 15. We actually left home when she was 12 and I was 15 to go and sing in a nightclub. And I just feel like we've been through the mill through our lives and I just feel like life's too short to sit around and be bummed out."

"We were singing our whole lives but we were doing things like Christian music that my dad wrote. He's not happy about it. And he writes us these crazy emails saying, 'Repent' and that we're sinners. All in capitals with exclamation marks"

"We had second-hand clothes, we lived nine years in the Ukraine without running water so no showers for nine years! It was really tough to be honest with you"

"Our dad is very religious. He's got his own crazy ideologies of what he thinks it's all about so no"

"You have to be positive, you have to stay happy, and we are here today because of our positive attitudes towards it."

"Leaving week one was a bit of a shock, I didn't think we'd leave this soon. But we knew it was coming and week one, week six, it doesn't really make a difference."

"And I think we nailed Kids In America with the theme. I loved the hula hoops and the dress and the green eyebrows. It was incredible and it really represented who we were!"

"We took the show one day at a time and we just had fun, and that's all that matters to us. We were ourselves and we had so much fun on the show."

"I'm so proud of the both of us, we desperately wanted to get into the live shows and we did. We don't care - we're just happy we got through this far."

"The chief thing I learnt at school was how to tell lies. Or rather, how to try to tell them; for, of course, I did it very badly."

"Dear Reader, you may take it from me, that however hard you try — or don't try; whatever you do — or don't do; for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; every way and every day: . So it is no good bothering about it. When the little pests grow up they will certainly tell you exactly what you did wrong in their case. But never mind; they will be just as wrong themselves in their turn."

"Ladies were ladies in those days; they did not do things themselves."

"The first religious experience that I can remember is getting under the nursery table to pray that the dancing mistress might be dead before we got to the Dancing Class."

"In my grandparents' house it was a distinction and a mournful pleasure to be ill. This was partly because my grandfather was always ill, and his children adored him and were inclined to imitate him; and partly because it was so delightful to be pitied and nursed by my grandmother."

"You can have no idea, if you have not tried, how difficult it is to find out anything whatever from an encyclopaedia, unless you know all about it already."

"I have defined Ladies as people who did not do things themselves. Aunt Etty was most emphatically such a person."

"This was something I'd been working on at home, which the band saw partially finished. It consequently became my first Death Metal cover. Prior to that I'd been making album covers for British thrash bands like Warfare, and Hydravein. Even though I was 18 when I did it, I still think it's quite interesting. It's not supposed to be spherical as has been suggested. It's more like a flat disk made of a fossil material, that has captured souls."

"Et nos in vitium prona caterva sumus. [We are but cattle prone to vice.]"

"She replied 'to those who argued that women did not want independence' with a rhetorical question that '"If the bird does like its cage and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?"'6"

"‘Don’t you think those netsuke should stay in Japan?’ said a stern neighbour of mine in London. And I find I am shaking as I answer, because this matters…. No I answer. Objects have always been carried, sold, bartered, stolen, retrieved and lost. People have always given gifts. It is how you tell their stories that matters."

"In the 1960s, my grandmother Elisabeth, so assiduous in her letter-writing, such an advocate for the letter (‘write again, write more fully’), burnt the hundreds of letters and notes she had received from her poetic grandmother Evelina. Not ‘Who would be interested?’ But ‘Don’t come near this. This is private.’… There is something about that burning of all those letters that gives me pause: why should everything be made clear and be brought into the light? Why keep things, archive your intimacies? Why not let thirty years of shared conversation go spiralling in ash up into the air of Tunbridge Wells? Just because you have it does not mean you have to pass it on. Losing things can sometimes gain you a space in which to live…. The problem is that I am in the wrong century to burn things. I am the wrong generation to let it go. I think of a library carefully sorted into boxes. I think of all those careful burnings by others, the systematic erasing of stories, the separations between people and their possessions, and then of people from their families and families from their neighbourhoods. And then from their country."

"I have been working long enough as a potter to know that being commissioned is an extremely delicate business. You are grateful, of course, but gratitude is different from feeling indebted. It is an interesting question for any artist: how long must you go on feeling grateful once someone has bought your work?"

"Melancholy, I think, is a sort of default vagueness, a get-out clause, a smothering lack of focus."

"‘All quite openly, publicly and legally’ were words that Elisabeth was to hear repeated back to her. She discovered that on the list of priorities in a shattered society, the restitution of property to those from whom it had been sequestered came near the bottom. Many of those who had appropriated Jewish property were now respected citizens of the new Austrian Republic. This was also a government that rejected reparations, because in their view Austria had been an occupied country between 1938 and 1945; Austria had become the ‘first victim’, rather than an agent in the war."

"Paul was a great help to me. He saved me a lot of time because one of the problems I had was that I used to draw comics when I fancied it, and suddenly now I had to draw comics when I had to. So I had to do three pages a week whether I wanted to or not. That'd be a luxury now, just doing three pages a week. But at the time it was a bit much for me to handle and Paul helped me make a quantum leap which would have taken me months longer if I'd been doing it myself."

"When I start work with a new writer, they often ask "What do you like to draw?" and my pat answer is always, "A good story". I'm not one of these artists into drawing giant robots or soldiers or big-titted women. Because for me, it's all about the story."

"I was more than happy to do [Hellblazer] as I ended up not being that happy on Animal Man, as it wasn't the book for me. Because I hate drawing animals, so it was rather silly of me in the first place to say yes. But it was the first offer of a regular (ongoing) comic book, which, for me, was a big thing."

"The acting side of comics is quite important to me. The facial expressions, how they interact and all that sort of thing. [...] I can [draw big fight scenes] if I need to, but not as good as some, because some people have a love for it, so that love shows through. I have a love for drawing people sitting in the pub talking. My specialised subject!"

"I haven't re-read [Preacher] yet. [...] Occasionally I see pages from it, and probably like most comic artists, the moment you see a drawing you did – no matter how many years ago – you can remember exactly how you did it, what the situation was when you were doing it, what time of night it was, whether you were drinking coffee or whether you were half-pissed! It all comes flooding back, just like smells or music bring back memories."

"I've changed my technique a few times in my career. [...] Sometimes you just change to challenge yourself. But also over the six years of Preacher, [my] style [changed] a bit. It's unusual to have a run that's so long that you can actually notice how the characters change. If I'd only done it for a year it wouldn't have changed that much. The characters just evolved naturally."

"I did a long series that I did on my own, Cry of The Werewolf. [...] I spent a whole summer drawing werewolves and there was my girlfriend and her mate sunbathing topless in the back garden, but I was there drawing werewolves. And there was nothing I could do about it because I had to do six pages a week. (laughs)"

"I think a lot of mainstream comics don't appeal to women, because that's the male fantasy of superheroes. [...] Preacher's more character-driven than it is action-driven."

"[Creator-owned projects] give you the chance to do your own ideas. But there's a lot of fun to be had working on characters that somebody else owns. I mean, before I die, I'd love to do a Batman [story]. I won't get as much money for it, unless it sells really really well. But it's something I'd like to do."

"Superheroes, the best superheroes, tend to be more soap opera-ish -- like the X-Men, and the old Spiderman stuff. But, that's for a continuing-forever sort of series. We've got a definite [Preacher] story that's got a definite finish, so soap opera is a bit of a disjointed term. But we do have the character subplot stuff going on."

"Steve was a great guy and a terrific talent. [...] One of those comic artists you could call a 'natural'."

"It's hard when you've done [something] yourself to step back and look at it but hopefully [Preacher] does have some sort of timeless quality because of the universal themes that are tackled, so that many years later people can still connect with it."

"For those who knew him, or had met him even once, and for the many more who admired and were inspired by his work, two themes emerged: first, his friendliness, good nature and powerful humor, and second, his astonishing skill as a storyteller from a young age."

"Steve Dillon was one of the best because he knew what was most important in what we do: the storytelling. That's his legacy."

"I very rarely ever told Steve how much I admired and appreciated his work, so that's the note I think I would like to end on, is just how big a fan I was of his work, and how brilliant and natural an artist he was."

"Steve Dillon was one of the best comic book storytellers there was. It also happened that he was a true gent to match."

"Dillon was a storyteller with few peers, able to render everything from a bloody confrontation to a quiet conversation, from moments of gut-busting comedy to the most crushing heartbreak imaginable."

"We had a kind of perfect symbiotic relationship: "I write, you draw; we trust each other." And it was actually as simple as that! There was no careful dissection and discussion of what we were doing. There was no "Would it be better if...?""

"My experience of Steve was always this consummate professional who never took it too seriously or wanted to blow his own trumpet. He drew my first pro job as a scriptwriter and showed how you really can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. What a lovely guy, what an immense talent – he will be sorely missed."

"Started my career photocopying Steve Dillon. A genius storyteller, he pushed comics forward by merging genres in order to elevate them."

"He knew in his his DNA how to tell a good story, and more than most professionals twice his age and experience. His use of composition, figure drawing and characterisation was second to none."

"He was a gifted artist, brilliant raconteur, loving dad, the best Guinness drinking buddy I have ever had."

"I aim to find time in my schedule for a decent night's sleep without cutting into my drinking time."

"[I]'ve got so much workload that [I] work about 12 hours a day. The last thing [I] want to do when [I] finish is read comics. It's like what Garth was saying. [I] work and then do something completely different. [...] It's part of the job really to keep aware of what other people are doing. But I just really haven't had the time to do anything else, anything else rather than the comic."

"[Preacher is] funny, dirty, a little bit frightening, but, ultimately, very satisfying—a bit like losing your virginity."

"The artist of Preacher was, and is—and could only ever have been—my good friend Steve Dillon, and he captured exactly what it was I wanted."