91 Quotes by Robert Crumb

When I was younger, I just lived my life on paper. I didn't really live in the real world very much. As a consequence, I couldn't cope with the real world and real people very well. That in itself became life threatening, so I had to stop drawing so much and learn how to cope with people.

With comics, you've got to develop some kind of shorthand. You can't make every drawing look like a detailed etching. The average reader actually doesn't want all that detail; it interferes with the flow of the reading process.

People still make me nervous, but gradually over the years I've developed kind of like a public personality, so I can talk. I have my spiel, I have my stories.

Some things I won't do for any amount of money. Like for instance, there's a couple of CEOs of very large corporations that offered me lots of money to do special pictures for them. And I just refused to do that. Even if it was a million dollars I wouldn't do it.

In the fall of 1968, I became attractive to women. One day I was an ignored schlub in the street, then suddenly all these good-looking women were interested in me.

If you're trying to work the art game, if you're like Andy Warhol or something, then you're in with cake-eaters of society. You want to get in with them and please them and get their money.

In my midteens I went through a brief stage of religious fanaticism, but it was very much about just saying prayers and stuff like that, reciting rosaries and spending a lot of time on that kind of Catholic ritual.

If I didn't draw comics I was a worthless human being. It was tedious labor, so I worked fast to get it over with.

I do covers for CDs and LPs of music that I like, reissues of old-time music, and then I'm inspired to make some kind of drawing based on this love of the music. I don't do album covers or CD covers for groups or musicians I don't like or have no interest in.