Crumb Quotes & Sayings

Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say - a weight here, at one's heart. — Gustave Flaubert

I must confess, my Spanish is not so good - except I read a little, so I started with the English but then determined that it would have to be in Spanish. — George Crumb

So long, crumb-bum. — J.D. Salinger

When I go back to America, after a few days I am once again filled with this kind of angry alienation and disgust with this thing there that America has got - you have no idea how pervasive it is there. The public relations and propaganda put out by the corporate mono-culture there is so pervasive. — Robert Crumb

Vanity may be likened to the smooth-skinned and velvet-footed mouse, nibbling about forever in expectation of a crumb; while self-esteem is too apt to take the likeness of the huge butcher's dog, who carries off your steaks, and growls at you as be goes. — William Gilmore Simms

The French hold onto their traditions. I was always so alienated in America. My work was this constant reaction to that. — Robert Crumb

Your vigor for life appalls me. — Robert Crumb

The ant, who has toiled and dragged a crumb to his nest, will furiously defend the fruit of his labor, against whatever robber assails him. So plain, that the most dumb and stupid slave that ever toiled for a master, does constantly know that he is wronged. — Abraham Lincoln

Rosy's mummy hands Franny a clear plastic bag full of reject biscuits, then Rosy holds her cheek out for Franny's wet kiss. Rosy wipes the slime from her face and Franny cackles, then shows them both into the lounge.
There on Franny's coffee table is a biscuit tin with a Christmas picture on the lid. Proper shop-bought biscuits, not factory rejects.
"Please, may I have a biscuit?" Rosy says.
"Oh, there are no biscuits in that my darling," Franny says, and pulls the tin from Rosy's prying fingers. Franny holds open the bag of crumb-speckled chocolate digestives. "Help yourself, my wee hen."
Rosy settles for a reject.
Franny puts the Christmas tin up high, way up high, way out of reach. — R.G. Manse

Once there was a queen in a palace of bread.
Sing blue, sing white, stay up all night.
She nibbled on the walls and gobbled up her bed.
Sing white, sing blue, sing ballyhoo.
The people begged a crumb from their robust queen.
Sing blue, sing white, she ate all night.
She would not share a thing until it turned green.
So white, so blue, the mold it grew. — Shannon Hale

But what sent his face clear down off his skull and broke him in two, though, was he said when he saw the Pam-shiny empty biscuit pan on top of the stove and the plastic rind of the peanut butter's safety-seal wrap on top of the wastebasket's tall pile. The little locket-picture in the back of his head swelled and became a sharp-focused scene of his wife and little girl and little unborn child eating what he now could see they must have eaten, last night and this morning, while he was out ingesting their groceries and rent. This was his cliff-edge, his personal intersection of choice, standing there loose-faced in the kitchen, running his finger around a shiny pan with not one little crumb of biscuit left in it. He sat down on the kitchen tile with his scary eyes shut tight but still seeing his little girl's face. They'd ate some charity peanut butter on biscuits washed down with tapwater and a grimace. — David Foster Wallace

Although technical discussions are interesting to composers, I suspect that the truly magical and spiritual powers of music arise from deeper levels of our psyche. — George Crumb

The Bible was not written for entertainment purposes, so it's a real hodgepodge and a compendium of all kinds of stuff. — Robert Crumb

And in that city Ferrante's rise began, at the outer edge of the Spanish court, where he learned that the virtue of sovereigns is their caprice, and Power is an insatiable monster, to be served with slavish devotion in order to snatch every crumb falling from that table. — Umberto Eco

Crumb," he said. "What?" A slight grin appeared on his face and then he reached out, without the napkin, and before I knew what he was doing, he smoothed his thumb over my bottom lip. Every single muscle in my body locked up and became painfully tense. My eyes widened and the air caught in my throat. The touch was slight, barely anything, but I felt it in several parts of my body. "Got it." His grin spread. — J. Lynn

I have observed, too, that the people of the many countries that I have visited are showing an ever increasing interest in the classical and traditional music of their own cultures. — George Crumb

Mum, mum,
He that keeps nor crust nor crumb,
Weary of all, shall want some. — William Shakespeare

I would call myself a Gnostic. Which means, I'm interested in pursuing and understanding the spiritual nature of things. A Gnostic is somebody seeking knowledge of that aspect of reality. — Robert Crumb

The more personal, revealing and sniveling, the more interesting...I wanna feel like I'm snooping, peeking thru the keyhole into somebody's, anybody's, private hell...no detail is too petty if it's honest... — Aline Kominsky-Crumb

I pick up the New York Times or Time and it's talking about the latest rock group, which I'm sure is exciting to some people, but it neglects a huge area of music. — George Crumb

One very important aspect of our contemporary musical culture - some might say the supremely important aspect - is its extension in the historical and geographical senses to a degree unknown in the past. — George Crumb

Ants - the pious insect, Randolph called them: they fill me with oh so much admiration and ah oh so much gloom: such puritan spirit in their mindless march of Godly industry, but can so anti-individual a government admit the poetry of what is past understanding? Certainly the man who refused to carry his crumb would find assassins on his trail, and doom in every smile. As for me, I prefer the solitary mole: he is no rose dependent upon thorn and root, nor ant whose time of being is organized by the analterable herd: sightless, he goes his separate way, knowing truth and freedom are attitudes of the spirit. — Truman Capote

Robert Crumb is an influence on how I draw, but not on the subject matter I take or my approach. One thing I do like about Crumb is that he's chronicled his age, his times, and I think that is what artists should do. — Joe Sacco

Pictures have a lot more power than text. Text is just a bunch of little symbols. You have to actually read it and imagine it, and even that can be censored. With pictures, it's a lot more immediate. — Robert Crumb

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. — Robert Crumb

Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth. — Cormac McCarthy

Is it not peculiar that nearly all of the great philosophers and psychologists have always paid attention to the earth and nothing but the earth? Would it not be more sublime to lift our eyes from this crumb, and instead of considering a speck of dust in the universe, to turn our attention to space itself? — Rainer Maria Rilke

I am nauseated by all these rotten people in Europe - and these fucking "democracies" are not worth even a crumb. — Frida Kahlo

We were always drawing comics as kids. My brother Charles made me draw comics. I was very much under his domination. He was actually a much stronger artistic visionary than I was. — Robert Crumb

This is not a happy time for this kind of music in this country. — George Crumb

I think we're in a very low point of music right now. — George Crumb

Feed two birds with one crumb. — Mischa Temaul

I've tasted every victual and danced every dance; now there's one last tart I haven't bit on, one time I haven't whistled. but I'm not afraid. I'm truly curious. Death won't get a crumb by my mouth I won't keep and savor. So don't you worry over me. Now, all of you go, and let me find my sleep ... — Ray Bradbury

More like a chocolate molten lava cake. A dessert so sinful, so luscious, so filled with inner heat it made a girl want to lick each and every crumb right off the plate. That was Jack Pallas. — Julie James

I can't hope to convey the full effect of the embraces and avowals, but I can perhaps offer a crumb of counsel. If there is anybody known to you who might benefit from a letter or a visit, do not on any account postpone the writing or the making of it. The difference made will almost certainly be more than you have calculated — Christopher Hitchens

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. — Robert Crumb

A dog will never forget the crumb thou gavest him, though thou mayst afterwards throw a hundred stones at his head. — Saadi

I am optimistic about the future of music. — George Crumb

Camilla, Henry, Thomas, you greedy monsters," Dad said. "Not a crumb left for your father? That's it, you're not my children. You're just sad, bald monkeys I won from circus folk in a poker game."
Ten retreated with his prize and went back to lean against Dad's leg. He split the brownie in two and offered half silently up to Dad.
"Well," Dad conceded, "I guess you might be my kid after all. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Watching everyone root through their psyche, it just delights me. Especially R. Crumb's stuff. — Alison Bechdel

Nonetheless, I sense that it will be the task of the future to somehow synthesize the sheer diversity of our present resources into a more organic and well-ordered procedure. — George Crumb

We ask for our daily crumb of love. We are given a ton for eternity, which is death. — Georges Perros

I can be loyal, Leon. I know what that is."
He laughed. "Finally, the girl gives me a crumb — Caragh M. O'Brien

If you love something, you find a way to have it in your life. Opposers may take away your means and tools, but you simply turn to crude replacements, fashioning them from scraps if necessary. Threats only make you steal moments of secrecy to satisfy your love. And if it means but a morsel here and there, you accept each crumb gladly because nothing else can even begin to satisfy your hunger. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Man's inhumanity to man is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep. — Alexander Berkman

As he weeps to wicked birds of prey, who pick up on his bread crumb sins, and there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden. — Bob Dylan

It is easy to write unthinking music. — George Crumb

Hyacinth," Lady Bridgerton said in a vaguely disapproving voice, "do try to speak in complete sentences."
Hyacinth looked at her mother with a surprised expression. "Biscuits. Are. Good." She cocked her head to the side. "Noun. Verb. Adjective."
"Hyacinth."
"Noun. Verb. Adjective." Colin said, wiping a crumb from his grinning face. "Sentence. Is. Correct. — Julia Quinn

Unquestionably, our contemporary world of music is far richer, in a sense, than earlier periods, due to the historical and geographical extensions of culture to which I have referred. — George Crumb

To his inner ear, the cardinal speaks. He says, I saw you, Crumb, when you were at Elvetham: scratching your balls in the dawn and wondering at the violence of the king's whims. If he wants a new wife, fix him one. I didn't, and I am dead. — Hilary Mantel

There is a pervasive myth that shortbread should never bake to the point of browning. I want to persuade you that a golden tint is not only okay but preferable. The buttery flavor will become more pronounced with a bit of color, and that is as essential an element to shortbread as its friable crumb. — Elisabeth Prueitt

I was raised Catholic and I went to church until I was 16. I went through a phase when I was 15 of being quite fanatically Catholic. I was going to church a lot, receiving communion, saying the Rosary, praying, all that stuff. But when I started scrutinizing it, it just fell apart so quickly. — Robert Crumb

I'm just a negative person, a deeply negative person. I see the worst aspects of everything. — 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. — Robert Crumb

Hell is yourself too. — Robert Crumb

God gave a loaf to every bird, But just a crumb to me. — Emily Dickinson

I believe that music surpasses even language in its power to mirror the innermost recesses of the human soul — George Crumb

VI. HOPE. Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I 've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. — Emily Dickinson

A crumb is a great thing: If you break a crumb in half, you don't get two half-crumbs, you get two crumbs. Doesn't that violate some law of physics? — George Carlin

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. — Robert Crumb

Civilization must be destroyed. The hairy saints of the North have earned this crumb by their complaints. — Wallace Stevens

The rage crept in. Like a shivering rat looking for a spot of warmth, a crumb of food. And with every passing day came an increasing anger so intense that Thomas sometimes caught himself shaking uncontrollably before he reeled the fury back in and pocketed it. He didn't want it to go away for good; he only wanted to store it and let it build. Wait for the right time, the right place, to unleash it. WICKED had done all this to him. WICKED had taken his life and those of his friends and were using them for whatever purposes they deemed necessary. No matter the consequences. And for that, they would pay. Thomas swore this to himself a thousand times a day. — James Dashner

Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. — Macrina Wiederkehr

Drawing is a way for me to articulate things inside myself that I can't otherwise grasp. — Robert Crumb

One that is ever kind said yesterday:
'Your well-beloved's hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience.'
Heart cries, 'No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild Summer was in her gaze.'
Heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted! — W.B.Yeats

Every time you make a fruit crisp for me, you are my favorite person in the world. It's something delicious and warm, right out of the oven. I mean, what more could anyone want? And all you're doing is taking the best fruit of the season, putting a crumb topping on it and putting it in the oven. — Tom Douglas

As time passed there was no more buying food, no money, no supplies. On some days, we wouldn't even have a crumb to eat. There's a vivid scene in Nanni Loy's The Four Days of Naples, a movie made after the war about the uprising of the Neapolitans against the occupying Germans, in which one of the young characters sinks his teeth into a loaf of bread so voraciously, so desperately, I can still identify with him. In those four famous days in late September, when Naples rose up against the Germans - even before the Allies arrived, it was the climax of a terrible period of deprivation and marked the beginning of the end of the war in Italy. — Sophia Loren

You can't make everybody love you. It's an exercise in futility, and it's probably not even a good idea to try. — Robert Crumb

Frank scooted back like the disk might explode. He had an orange-juice mustache and a brownie-crumb beard that made Piper want to hand him a napkin. — Rick Riordan

I frequently hear our present period described as uncertain, confused, chaotic. — George Crumb

Bomb-proof vault. Our diseases are our attachments, be they habits, ideologies, ideals, principles, possessions, phobias, gods, cults, religions, what you please. Good wages can be a disease just as much as bad wages. Leisure can be just as great a disease as work. Whatever we cling to, even if it be hope or faith, can be the disease which carries us off. Surrender is absolute: if you cling to even the tiniest crumb you nourish the germ which will devour you. — Henry Miller

Everything that is strong in me has gone into my art work. — Robert Crumb

Despite all that had been spilled, was the cup still half full? Or did a crumb of Wellbutrin just lodge free from between his brain's teeth, offering a morsel of undigested happiness? The cup was half full enough. Despite — Jonathan Safran Foer

I still can't spend a lot of money on records at collector prices. There's something in me that just won't allow me to do that. But I will trade my artwork, which I know is worth thousands of dollars. — Robert Crumb

I leaned across the table towards the crumb-thrower. "Do that again," I said, loud enough to be heard over the opera singer, Dolly, my mother, and the smell of the breadsticks, "and I will sell your firstborn child to the devil. — Maggie Stiefvater

Flesh. The word must become flesh; the soul thirsts. On whatever crumb my eye fastens, — Anonymous

Her little hands, Crumb. Her little paws, like a child's. She has no guile in her. And she never speaks. And if she does I hate to bend my head to hear what she says. And in the pause I can hear my heart. Her little bits of embroidery, her scraps of silk, her halcyon sleeves, she cut out of the cloth some admirer gave her once, some poor boy struck with love for her...and yet she has never succumbed. Her little sleeves, her seed pearl necklace...she has nothing...she expects nothing...' A tear at last sneaks from Henry's eye, meanders down his cheek and vanishes into the mottled grey and ginger of his beard. — Hilary Mantel

There is no better time than the autumn to begin forgetting the things that trouble us, allowing them to fall away like dried leaves. There is no better time to dance again, to make the most of every crumb of sunlight and warm body and soul with its rays before it falls asleep and becomes only a dim light bulb in the skies. — Paulo Coelho

I'm a child in that respect: able to live, physically speaking, on a crumb of anticipation for weeks at a time, but always in danger of crushing the waited-for event with the freight of my excessive hope. — Zoe Heller

I'm sure all of that's true. Especially the anal bit
Marshall's always been an ass
but I don't see how this is relevant, unless of course I'm mistaken, and you really are comparing me to a crumb that needs sweeping. - Shella — Krista Alasti

Perhaps two million years ago the creatures of a planet in some remote galaxy faced a musical crisis similar to that which we earthly composers face today. — George Crumb

Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy! — Joseph Conrad

When people say 'What are underground comics?' I think the best way you can define them is just the absolute freedom involved ... we didn't have anyone standing over us. — Robert Crumb

You got a sad story, ruth,' mimba said. 'but not sad-sad. you here with me and cato and all us together now. you have a happy-sad story. best you can get in this life is happy-sad. but you always gotta remember your own mama that birthed you. even though you only got a crumb of her story, you still got to say her name out loud. you always honor your dead, else you get trouble from them, sure. — Anita Diamant

He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. — Cormac McCarthy

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. — Robert Crumb

Yeah, I was a child of American popular culture. — Robert Crumb

I have always had an abiding interest in that type of female anatomy. — Robert Crumb

When I went around promoting 'Crumb,' there would be days I'd wake up in, like, Houston or Cleveland, and I'd step outside the hotel and get no idea where I was. It all looks the same: one big corporate, consumer theme park. It's all, 'Here's the Starbucks, and here's the Gap, and we'll go over to Banana Republic and the Cineplex.' — Terry Zwigoff

Music might be defined as a system of proportions in the service of a spiritual impulse — George Crumb

You don't have to be a Fundamentalist Christian to be interested in the Bible. It's really a fascinating mythology. — Robert Crumb

MAN: You said pound cake. WOMAN: I didn't say pound cake, I said crumb cake. MAN: You said pound cake. WOMAN: Don't tell me what I said. MAN: You said pound cake. WOMAN: I said crumb cake. MAN: I actually saw the crumb cake but I didn't get it because you said pound cake. WOMAN: I said crumb cake. MAN: Well, I heard pound cake. WOMAN: Then you obviously weren't listening. Crumb cake doesn't even sound like pound cake. MAN: Well, maybe you accidentally said pound cake. Woman: I said crumb cake. - overheard in Grand Central Station, November 13, 2008 — Kathryn Schulz

I met Robert Crumb in 1962; he lived in Cleveland for a while. I took a look at his stuff. Crumb was doing stuff beyond what other writers and artists were doing. It was a step beyond Mad. — Harvey Pekar

At my back I hear the word-"homosexual"-and it seems to split my world in two ... It is ignorance, our ignorance of one another, that creates this terrifying erotic chaos. Information, a crumb of information, seems to light the world. — John Cheever

Perhaps many of the perplexing problems of the new music could be put into a new light if we were to reintroduce the ancient idea of music being a reflection of nature. — George Crumb

Sasha snorted. "I have never in my extremely long life seen anyone take so long to answer a question. It's like you went into your brain and got lost. you need a bread crumb, buddy?" He made a noise like he was calling his pet. "Here Lassie, here. Come back girl. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

You must thank the gods for art, those of us who have been fortunate enough to stumble onto this means of venting our craziness, our meanness, our towering disgust. — Robert Crumb

Do good even to the wicked; it is as well to shut a dog's mouth with a crumb. — Saadi

At least I hate myself as much as I hate anybody else. — Robert Crumb

I've always been a very restless person. I work hard, spend too much time looking after my son, I dance like a mad thing, I learned calligraphy. I go to courses on selling, I read one book after another. But that's all a way of avoiding those moments when nothing is happening, because those blank spaces give me a feeling of absolute emptiness, in which not a single crumb of love exists. — Paulo Coelho