Comic Strip Quotes & Sayings

I answered an ad, for a campus cartoonist at the university I was in, my freshman year. I was like, Oh, I can draw, and I'm sort of a funny guy. I should try this. Then they paid me to do a comic strip for the paper. — Dan Povenmire

They are not grey roots! This is my new fifty shades of grey OMBRE hairstyle! — Tanya Masse

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. — Ben Katchor

I'd rather be surround by people who make mistakes and have no problem admitting to them and learning from them than be surrounded by people who think they make none. — Tanya Masse

I need COFFEE to help me change the things I can ... and WINE to help me accept the things I can't! — Tanya Masse

Through my newspaper comic strip, public speaking, and filmmaking, I try to tell as many people as possible, of all ages and from all walks of life, that we are destroying the ocean at such an alarming rate that we can't wait for a systematic solution. We can't wait for our political leadership to warm up to the idea, and we can't wait for the free market to find alternatives. We must act as individuals, now. — Jim Toomey

I wanted to do the comic strip. I tried to get it syndicated, and I sent some examples to a syndication company, and they sent me a rejection letter! I wasn't smart enough at the time to realize you shouldn't let rejection letters stop you. I thought that rejection letter meant I was not allowed to be a cartoonist in this world, so I put the rejection letter down and said, well, I'll be a stand-up comedian. — Brian Regan

To get syndicated as a comic strip artist is as likely as winning the lottery. — Stephan Pastis

A baby boy has a special way of brining out the man in his father and the little boy in his grandfather. — Tanya Masse

A comic strip that your parents read when they were young is a curious thing: it's an heirloom, and it's also intimate. You peer through windows and look at the things that made your elders laugh, and then you wonder whether the laugh really belongs to you. — Elizabeth McCracken

Don't compare yourself to other MOMS ... We are all just winging it, just some hide it better than others. — Tanya Masse

Motherhood is a constant battle of wanting to go to bed early so you can catch up on sleep and wanting to stay awake so you can enjoy some peace and sanity! — Tanya Masse

Imagine my surprise when, after a lifetime of teaching me to keep personal things to myself, Mom insisted my drawings were the start of a comic strip for millions of people to enjoy. — Cathy Guisewite

It seems so absurd to get really mad with a cartoonist over a comic strip. It's sort of like getting in a fight with a circus clown outside your house. It's not going to end well. — Stephan Pastis

I remember back when I was a kid there was a comic strip called Plastic Man. His body was elastic and he could make his extremities as long as he wanted. As a youngster I didn't fully appreciate. But I'm now thinking Plastic Man was probably pretty popular with the ladies. — Ben Affleck

You can't take anything in life WAY too seriously ... Even the serious stuff! — Tanya Masse

You know you've officially hit a midlife crisis when you finally start feeling like you have your life together and your body starts falling apart! — Tanya Masse

If you can't handle my CRAZY ... You don't deserve my AWESOME! — Tanya Masse

It's gratifying to hear that from people who care about comic art. I never know what to make of it when someone writes to say, "Calvin and Hobbes is the best strip in the paper. I like it even more than Nancy." — Bill Watterson

Having a syndicated comic strip is a great platform for ripping on expressions you hate. — Stephan Pastis

I'm pretty sure that my Restless Leg Syndrome is simply caused my body just fighting the urge to RUN AWAY! — Tanya Masse

For a long time I wanted to be a comic strip artist but when I started doing them in my teens they were getting really elaborate with tons of poses and a lot of information. — Craig McCracken

Well, I'm always working on my comic strip and trying to, you know, keep cranking that out. — Alison Bechdel

Comic-strip stuff isn't really my cup of tea, really. — Guy Pearce

For the uninitiated, 'Calvin and Hobbes' is a daily comic strip detailing the antics of an unruly six-year-old and his misanthropic stuffed tiger. The boy, whose vocabulary is packed with more 10-dollar words than a GRE flashcard set, is named after John Calvin, the Reformation-era theologian who preached the doctrine of predestination. — Anthony Marra

For a long time, I was under the impression that 'Terry and the Pirates' was the best comic strip in the United States. — John Updike

A stand-up comedian faces the audiences and gets their immediate feedback. I hide behind the comic strip, and unless people write to me, I don't know what they think. — Stephan Pastis

I wasn't intending to create a comic strip to begin with. So I think I wasn't aware that when the strip started, there had never been a woman's voice quite like this in the newspaper. — Cathy Guisewite

Have you ever felt like you were caught in a maze in which nothing made sense? In which you saw Superman and the Green Goblin in the same comic strip when they really belonged in two different stories? — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

You have two choices ... You can make the BEST of IT or you can let IT get the BEST of you! — Tanya Masse

Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse ... by Floyd Gottfredson will be warmly received by comics aficionados but should also intrigue Disney animation buffs who aren't necessarily plugged into comic strip history ... I have a feeling that this book, crafted with such obvious care, will earn Gottfredson a new legion of admirers. — Leonard Maltin

Fortunately, I'm able to make a living from comics, so I'm privileged enough to be quite choosy, though most cartoonists can't afford to be. It's really an uncomfortable situation, since I'm not an illustrator, though I do get calls from morally indefensible businesses offering me money to decorate their ambitions. It's extremely rare, almost unheard of, in fact, that I am asked to do a comic strip. Do writers get calls to pen Toyota advertisements? Do composers get asked to write chamber pieces about exercise machines? — Chris Ware

COFFEE! Because this body is NOT going to wake itself up! — Tanya Masse

Saturday morning cartoons do that now, where they develop the toy and then draw the cartoon around it, and the result is the cartoon is a commercial for the toy and the toy is a commercial for the cartoon. The same thing's happening now in comic strips; it's just another way to get the competitive edge. You saturate all the different markets and allow each other to advertise the other, and it's the best of all possible worlds. You can see the financial incentive to work that way. I just think it's to the detriment of integrity in comic strip art. — Bill Watterson

It seems beyond the comprehension of people that someone can be born to draw comic strips, but I think I was. My ambition from earliest memory was to produce a daily comic strip. — Charles M. Schulz

I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic-strip novel masterpiece. — John Updike

'Blade Runner' was a comic strip. It was a comic strip! It was a very dark comic strip. Comic metaphorically. — Ridley Scott

Taking care of yourself, taking time for yourself & rewarding yourself is NOT selfish. It's important & absolutely necessary! — Tanya Masse

We're having the first computer-generated comic strip in the United States. — Majel Barrett

We don't lose our loved ones when they die. We gain guardian angels. - Tanya Masse aka Comic Strip Mama — Tanya Masse

MIDLIFE is that pivotal moment when you can FINALLY say that you basically have all your shit together and then your body starts falling apart! — Tanya Masse

People who have NO ambition to make a difference in this life should not interrupt the people who DO. — Tanya Masse

I'm not good at narrative; I'm really a gag writer, and that comes from being in the newspaper comic strip world for a while in college. What I do is I just write tons of jokes, then I sort them out in terms of quality and then pick the best of the jokes and then try to form them into a plot. If I get a good theme going, I feel lucky. — Jeff Kinney

A wise man once said NOTHING ... He just let her vent, nodded his head and live happily ever after! — Tanya Masse

I've always felt that the comic strip medium stands equally beside all the other story telling mediums: novels, movies, stage plays, opera, you know, you name it. — Dave Gibbons

The peddling of fear in any form as incentive to faith remains the most egregious sin that can be committed in the name of Jesus. It feels very good to name the enemy and thank God that you are not like "those people." But if Christianity is to survive, someone needs to stand up in the middle of one of these hapless sermons and quote the comic-strip character Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and he is us. — Robin Meyers

You should base everything on what you see with your own eyes, hear with your own ears and feel with your own heart. Period. Always believe what you KNOW about a person, not what you HEAR. — Tanya Masse

Asking me to do ANYTHING before I've had my first cup of coffee should be an episode on 1000 Ways to DIE. — Tanya Masse

Comic-strip artists generally have very modest ambitions. Day to day, we labor to fit together all these little moving parts - a character or two, a few lines of dialogue, framing, pacing, payoff - but we certainly don't think of them adding up over time to some larger portrait of our times. — Garry Trudeau

Sometimes LIFE is rough and tough. That's still NO excuse for you to be. — Tanya Masse

"Real" drawing is about specifics. It's about describing an object as accurately as possible. In a comic strip you have to draw a picture of the idea of the object. You have to draw the word that you are picturing, then you have to mix in specifics with it for it to work as a story. But you are still working with drawn words. — Chris Ware

The HAPPIEST people don't have the BEST of everything ... They just drink WINE. — Tanya Masse

One of the things you have to be able to do, as a comic strip artist, is to draw things repeatedly from a variety of angles, so you need references, and you find the best picture you can. — Dave Gibbons

Along with all else, Sandman is a comic strip for intellectuals, and I say it's about time. — Norman Mailer

Comic strip is almost like music on a page that you perform in your mind. It's not just pictures. There's a particular rhythm and structure to it that is unlike anything else. It literally is like music. You hear it in your mind as you read it. — Chris Ware

The world of a comic strip ought to be a special place with its own logic and life ... I don't want the issue of Hobbes's reality settled by a doll manufacturer. — Bill Watterson

After Katrina, I decided it's better to have a President who's competent rather than one who's beer-worthy.

Doonsebury — G.B. Trudeau

In a comic strip, you can suggest motion and time, but it's very crude compared to what an animator can do. I have a real awe for good animation. — Bill Watterson

Life isn't always easy. I struggle day to day. But I choose to live life to the fullest and keep reminding myself that I am stronger than ANYTHING that stands in my way. — Tanya Masse

Your RELIGION does not make you a good person. Your BEHAVIOR does. — Tanya Masse

Cheating on a quiz show? That's sort of like plagiarizing a comic strip. — Paul Scofield

I seemed to have instinctually a strong idea of how the strip had to be written from the beginning. That changed too, but it was more in the direction of where it was headed. I didn't have a clue as to the drawing style, because the drawing style that I was groomed on from the beginning was newspaper comic strips, which were much more conventional. — Jules Feiffer

She liked the way the words sounded. She imagined them floating above her in a comic-strip bubble — Kate DiCamillo

I never thought Cathy would get married in the comic strip. And I also thought I would never get married in real life. So both are shocks to me. — Cathy Guisewite

The cultural work done in the past by gods and epic sagas is now done by laundry-detergent commercials and comic-strip character — Roland Barthes

WINE. Because...KIDS! — Tanya Masse

Writing this book feels like a completely different activity from writing my comic strip because it's about real life. I feel like I'm using a part of my brain that's been dormant until now. — Alison Bechdel

If you're going to draw a comic strip every day, you're going to have to draw on every experience in your life. — Charles M. Schulz

I had been drawing my weekly comic strip, 'Life in Hell,' for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was developing 'The Tracey Ullman Show' for the brand-new Fox network. He wanted me to come in and pitch an idea for doing little cartoons on that show. — Matt Groening

There's only one thing to do in crisis like this - SLEEP ON IT!

Garfield, the cat. — Jim Davis

The key to any good comic strip or television sitcom is to reset the board at the end of the episode because people like familiarity. — Jeff Kinney

Moominpappa: "Tell us all that's happening out in the world!"
Snufkin: "Fuss and misery."
- from "Moomin and Family Life" comic strip — Tove Jansson

When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn't write and thought adult handwriting was a mysterious scribble. When I was 14, my grandmother gave me a typewriter and I started writing in a different way. — Joyce Carol Oates

In the right hands, a comic strip attains a beauty and elegance that, really, I would put against any other art. — Bill Watterson

Looking back Little Lulu was an early feminist, but at the time I just thought she was a really feisty developed comic strip character. — Bill Griffith

I hope some historian will confirm that I was the first cartoonist to use the word 'booger' in a newspaper comic strip. — Bill Watterson

A comic strip has a rhythm and a pattern, and you got to get in and out quick. So you set up a joke, tell the joke, and done. — Stephan Pastis

If you want to see a comic strip, you should see me in the shower. — Groucho Marx

MOM - noun - One who sacrifices her body, sleep, social life, spending money, eating hot meals, peeing alone, patience, memory, energy and sanity for LOVE! — Tanya Masse

I take great comfort in believing that life doesn't end, it just changes. Our bodies are pure energy. Energy doesn't die, it transforms. I believe that when we die, we simply change from our human form to our spiritual form and we continue to love, guide and protect the ones we love on earth, as much as our energy will allow. It is the only logical explanation that makes perfect sense. - Tanya Masse aka Comic Strip Mama — Tanya Masse

Most films are rooted in a book or a comic strip, but I don't go out there saying I want to do adaptations. — Ralph Fiennes

If one door closes and another door opens, chances are your house is haunted. — Tanya Masse

On a far-flung parcel of government land situated somewhere in the vast reaches of parched American western desert sits an abandoned and long forgotten government facility known as Lost Cactus. That is what the shadowy agency ~ that operates there to this day ~ wants everyone from presidents on down to John Q. Public to believe. — John Hopkins

I don't need a personal trainer ... I need someone to stalk me and threaten to kick my ass when I eat and drink stuff I'm not supposed to! — Tanya Masse

Gamma rays are the sort of radiation you should avoid. Want proof? Just remember how the comic strip character "The Hulk" became big, green, and ugly. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Readers have told me that their children have learned to read after years of struggle after starting to read Garfield's comic strip and many people who have moved to the United States have said that they, too, learned English by reading Garfield. — Jim Davis

To live in society today is like living in one enormous comic-strip. — Jean-Luc Godard

The comic strip is what I looked at, and it's another reason I did it. The comic strip, where animals would comment on human behaviour, interested me. — Garry Shandling

What is a body that casts no shadow? Nothing, a formlessness, two-dimensional, a comic-strip character. If I deny my own profound relationship with evil I deny my own reality. I cannot do, or make; I can only undo, unmake. — Ursula K. Le Guin

[Comics is] one of the last havens for honesty when it comes to a reader's genuine response to art. Most of us, if we don't find any sympathy or pleasure, for example, in a modern painting, are likely to blame our own ignorance of the history and theory of painting. But nobody pretends to like a bad comic strip. Such harshness is necessary for any real truth to surface, I think, and for art to really contribute anything to life. Though I don't know. I could be wrong. — Chris Ware

Comic-strip artists do not make good husbands, and God knows they do not make good comic strips. — Don Herold

If there is ONE THING that you do today, let it be this ...
Don't take life WAY too seriously. — Tanya Masse

An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol. — Ayn Rand

I've always just loved drawing and loved cartoons. Growing up, I loved Disney films, I loved The Simpsons, and I was a big fan of the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes and the way that they would have weird fantasy and then down-to-earth funny character comedy. — Alex Hirsch

Charles Schultz is a really interesting case. He wrote that comic strip and drew it himself from beginning to end, and it's a work of genius. It's very simply drawn, but it has some really deep emotions that you don't expect in a silly-looking comic strip. — Matt Groening

Anyone dumb enough to get his political information from a comic strip deserves what he gets at the polls. — Garry Trudeau

Sometimes people try to read into my strip and find out what my state of mind is. And I can say if I'm in a good mood, generally the comic strip starts out in a good mood, but the punchline is very negative and sour. — Matt Groening

MOMB - noun - One who can deal with all of the INSANITY of being a MOM ... Because she's the BOMB! — Tanya Masse

Bill Watterson argued with his medium even as he eclipsed it. He was all too aware that no artistic expression better exemplifies our disposable consumer culture than the daily newspaper comic strip: today's masterpiece is tomorrow's birdcage lining. — Anthony Marra

There's a rhythm to the words combined with the pictures [in a comic]. Whenever I'm working on a comic strip I re-read it, probably hundreds of times through to pay attention to how all of those things work. Sometimes even changing the angle of a character's eyebrow can really, seriously alter the effect and overall interpretation of a scene. And the insertion of a pause or a cough or a sniff, and all these things that we do in conversation, can bring it to life in a strange way. — Chris Ware