Most people [feel] ‘bad at art’ and never draw again except for on the margins of pages or on the covers of telephone books. That thing we call ‘doodling’.

A lot of people still do that when they are taking notes or listening to someone or waiting for someone to come back to the phone. Have you ever wondered why this is?

What is the reason for it? I believe it’s because it helps us maintain a certain patient state of mind and there is a part of us which has never forgotten this.

[…] Doodles can be called mindless drawing. Its one of the last places drawing still exists in a person who gave up on art long ago. A place where one line can still follow another without a plan.

— Lynda Barry, What It Is, 2008, Drawn & Quarterly, p. 102-103