Time & Perspective Quote by Gil Kane

Kane frames “looking” as both a compulsion and a craft: a habit that chewed up his peace of mind even as it built his talent. The line turns on that double bind. “One quality” sounds like a neat personality trait, but he immediately admits it “ruined” him, suggesting a life where attention never shuts off. For an artist, relentless perception is the engine; for a person, it can be a kind of insomnia.

The subtext is less romantic “vision” than a work ethic with teeth. “I never stopped looking” isn’t passive admiration. It’s surveillance of the world and of other artists, an ongoing audit of anatomy, gesture, composition, pacing. Then comes the kicker: “by that time I was really working at it.” He’s describing the moment when obsession stops being accidental and becomes deliberate training. Looking becomes labor.

Context matters here: Kane emerged in midcentury commercial art, where output was punishing and originality was policed by deadlines. In comics especially, “looking” means absorbing cinema, illustration, life drawing, then synthesizing it at speed on the page. That pressure produces the paradox he names: the same hyper-awareness that makes you better also makes you harder to satisfy, harder to rest, harder to live inside your own work without seeing its flaws.

There’s a quiet humility, too. Kane doesn’t claim genius; he claims refusal to stop paying attention. It’s a credo that demystifies artistic achievement while admitting the cost: the eye that keeps improving is also the eye that keeps judging.