26 Quotes by Ben Katchor

The publishing industry has always wanted to make books as cheaply and as ephemerally as they could; it's nothing new.

I never wore a watch. I always depend on public clocks, and stores have clocks, but that is strange.

I'm very interested in music and where these sounds of Western music come from.

As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn't know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics.

I live in an apartment building built in 1925, and it hasn't been heavily renovated, so I feel very much connected to that time and what went on in that place.

I remember as a child going to an exhibit about the Soviet Union, and every paper had this alien smell. The paper and the ink were all exported. It was like a piece of cheese from that country, you could touch it, feel it, smell it, and it was different.

In America, there's a very long tradition of a comic strip that comes in newspapers, which is not true all over the world. To sell papers, they put color comics in.

Sometimes I make things that people have very strong responses to. Whether that's art, I don't know. That's one of those words that doesn't mean anything. It's why I don't just use words.

The click [of a light switch] is the modern triumphal clarion proceeding us through life, announcing our entry into every lightless room.