There’s some connection between visual images and music. But there’s plenty of old records where I have no idea what the band looked like, or even what sort of context the music was played in.
I couldn’t find any good pictures in magazines of ordinary modern street corners in America, so I persuaded this guy I knew in Sacramento – Stanley Something-or-other – to spend a day with me driving around just to take snapshots.
I’m just a negative person, a deeply negative person. I see the worst aspects of everything.
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.
I guess I didn’t enjoy drawing very much. It was like homework.
Most of my adult life I had this towering contempt for America.
I lose patience with long stories. I get people who go, “Crumb, do some long stories, do a graphic novel.” Novel-schmovel.
Your vigor for life appalls me.
Drawing is a way for me to articulate things inside myself that I can’t otherwise grasp.
I’m an outsider. I will always be an outsider.
I’m into old-time music, I’m not very interested in modern, popular music at all. And if I’m really into some particular old-time musician, some fiddler or banjo player, I’m always dying of curiosity to see what they look like.
Throwaway pens are no good – I never liked them. I’ve tried them all.
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.
Violence begets violence, and then you get leaders who are violent men. And you don’t want that.
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.
The Bible was not written for entertainment purposes, so it’s a real hodgepodge and a compendium of all kinds of stuff.
Yeah, I was a child of American popular culture.
I don’t do album covers or CD covers for groups or musicians I don’t like or have no interest in.
I use photos a lot for drawing people and personalities, but they’re almost never photos that I’ve taken.
Hell is yourself too.