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.
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.
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.
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.