I had always wanted to include images in a novel, and with my first book, 'Telex From Cuba,' I made an elaborate website that is basically all images.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Last year I think I made more from my Image books than anywhere else.
Each time I went to create my website, I needed imagery. It was complicated to get, the process was expensive, I had to negotiate rights. I knew there had to be a better way.
I'm not as good a writer as I'd like to be; therefore, I like to use images to tell stories.
Making books is a very specific kind of activity. It's not really a collection of your best pictures - although it is - but it's also a way of presenting your work so that it's not repetitive, so that it flows, and so that it makes sense in a book.
For most of my career I illustrated books for other people.
I think readers' imaginations are far more powerful than anything you can put on a page and, therefore, can conjure up graphic images for themselves, which I think you just have to nudge them towards.
One of these days, I'm going to publish a book of all the pictures I did not take. It is going to be a huge hit.
I wanted a picture of Jamaica that isn't in books, and certainly not in novels.
For 'Picture This,' I wanted it to be a drawing book that didn't have any instructions about drawing, beyond the real simple stuff you'd find like in a Bazooka bubblegum wrapper, or in 'Highlights' magazine. I just wanted it to be feelings about looking and seeing and pictures.
The images from the book you make in your head are always going to be the best images.