Robert Crumb famous quotes

07-17-2025

You donâ€™t have journalists over there anymore, what they have is public relations people. Thatâ€™s what they have over in America now. Two-hundred and fifty thousand people in public relations. And a dwindling number of actual reporters and journalists.
-- Robert Crumb

#Two #Numbers #America
When I come up against the real world, I just vacillate.
-- Robert Crumb

#Real #World #Come Up
I felt so painfully isolated that I vowed I would get revenge on the world by becoming a famous cartoonist.
-- Robert Crumb

#Revenge #World #Becoming
There's many heroic underappreciated investigative journalists.
-- Robert Crumb

#Heroic #Journalist
Throwaway pens are no good - I never liked them. I've tried them all.
-- Robert Crumb

#Pens
The work itself is what motivates me. I like my own stuff, you know? I like the way it looks. I do it to please myself first.
-- Robert Crumb

#Stuff #Way #Firsts
Violence begets violence, and then you get leaders who are violent men. And you don't want that.
-- Robert Crumb

#Men #Leader #Violence
I always had a sketchbook with me when I was young. I was hiding behind it, basically, hiding behind drawing because I couldn't cope with people in real life; I was very shy and very nervous around people.
-- Robert Crumb

#Real #Drawing #People
The Bible was not written for entertainment purposes, so it's a real hodgepodge and a compendium of all kinds of stuff.
-- Robert Crumb

#Real #Stuff #Entertainment
Everything that is strong in me has gone into my art work.
-- Robert Crumb

#Strong #Art #Gone
As a kid growing up in the 1950s I became acutely aware of the changes taking place in American culture and I must say I didn't much like it. I witnessed the debasement of architecture, and I could see a decline in the quality of things like comic books and toys, things made for kids. Old things seemed to have more life, more substance, more humanity in them.
-- Robert Crumb

#Growing Up #Book #Kids
At least I hate myself as much as I hate anybody else.
-- Robert Crumb

#Hate #I Hate Myself #I Hate
When people say 'What are underground comics?' I think the best way you can define them is just the absolute freedom involved... we didn't have anyone standing over us.
-- Robert Crumb

#Thinking #People #Way
Killing yourself is a major commitment, it takes a kind of courage. Most people just lead lives of cowardly desperation. It's kinda half suicide where you just dull yourself with substances.
-- Robert Crumb

#Suicide #Commitment #People
The only burning passion I'm sure I have is the passion for sex.
-- Robert Crumb

#Sex #Passion #Burning
You can't make everybody love you. It's an exercise in futility, and it's probably not even a good idea to try.
-- Robert Crumb

#Love You #Exercise #Ideas
The comics are where all the crazy subconscious stuff comes out.
-- Robert Crumb

#Crazy #Stuff #Subconscious
The French hold onto their traditions. I was always so alienated in America. My work was this constant reaction to that.
-- Robert Crumb

#America #Tradition #Reactions
I'm just a negative person, a deeply negative person. I see the worst aspects of everything.
-- Robert Crumb

#Negative #Aspect #Worst
The fine-art world knows very little about the cartoon world.
-- Robert Crumb

#Art #World #Littles
Yeah, I was a child of American popular culture.
-- Robert Crumb

#Children #Culture #Yeah
I guess I didn't enjoy drawing very much. It was like homework.
-- Robert Crumb

#Funny #Drawing #Homework
Most of my adult life I had this towering contempt for America.
-- Robert Crumb

#America #Adults #Contempt
Your vigor for life appalls me.
-- Robert Crumb

#Vigor
Drawing is a way for me to articulate things inside myself that I can't otherwise grasp.
-- Robert Crumb

#Drawing #Way
I'm an outsider. I will always be an outsider.
-- Robert Crumb

#Outsiders
I knew I was weird by the time I was four. I knew I wasn't like other boys. I knew I was more fearful. I didn't like the rough and tumble most boys were into. I knew I was a sissy.
-- Robert Crumb

#Boys #Four #Sissy
I didn't invent anything; it's all there in the culture; it's not a big mystery. I just combine my personal experience with classic cartoon stereotypes.
-- Robert Crumb

#Cartoon #Culture #Classic

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