Spiegelman Quotes & Sayings

I'm supposed to be making comics, so I had to do it the best way I knew how, which is what those guys at the beginning of the Twentieth Century were doing. — Art Spiegelman

You were with Margo Roth Spiegelman last night? At THREE A.M.? I nodded. Alone? I nodded. Oh my God, if you hooked up with her, you have to tell me every single thing that happened. You have to write me a term paper on the look and feel of Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts. Thrity pages, minimum! I want you to do a photo-realistic pencil drawing. A sculpture would also be acceptable. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to write a sestina about Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts? Your six words are: pink, round, firmness, succulent, supple, and pillowy. Personally, I think at least one of the words should be buhbuhbuhbuh. — John Green

To find Margo Roth Spiegelman, you must become Margo Roth Spiegelman.
And I had done many of the things she might have done: I had engineered a most unlikely prom coupling. I had quieted the hounds of caste warfare. I had come to feel comfortable inside the rat-infested haunted house where she did her best thinking. I had seen. I had listened. But I could not yet become the wounded person. — John Green

The medium of comics is not necessarily about "good drawing"--"It's just an accident when it makes a nice drawing," Spiegelman explained to a curator at the MoMA--but rather about what Spiegelman calls picture-writing and Satrapies calls narrative drawing: how one person constructs a narrative that moves forward in time through both words and images. — Hillary Chute

It had been a long while since I'd watched any television, and things had only gotten weirder. Beauty pageants for infants; ruddy men in trucker caps fighting over abandoned storage lockers; public shamings of compulsive hoarders and pre-diabetics; affluent suburban women made up like transvestite hookers, competing with each other in feats of coarseness and cruelty; barely literate pregnant teens with tattoos, unfocused eyes, and futures like wrecked cars; apoplectic crypto-fascists spitting bile and paranoia; a carnival midway of weight loss devices, hair growth creams, erectile dysfunction potions, and pottery from which herbs grew like green hair. It was like the day room of a surrealist mental hospital, or any big city ER on a summer Saturday night. — Peter Spiegelman

All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. — John Green

A person who can get a good table at Chez Panisse at the last minute is a very important person indeed. Royalty begins with Alice Waters. — Willard Spiegelman

Some of the reviewers wanted less. Some wanted lots more. Some wanted lots more of something else. But these strips are exactly what they are. — Art Spiegelman

Everything's uglier close up -Margo Roth Spiegelman — John Green

Comics are a gateway drug to literacy. — Art Spiegelman

I couldn't figure out which of these ideas, if any, was at the core of the poem. But thinking about the grass and all the different ways you could se it made me think about all the ways I'd seen and mis-seen Margo. There was no shortage of ways to see her. I'd been focused on what had become of her, but now with my head trying to understand the multiplicity of grass and her smell from the blanket still in my throat, I realized that the most important question was who I was looking for. If "What is the grass?" has such a complicated answer, I thought, so, too, must "Who is Margo Roth Spiegelman?" Like a metaphor rendered incomprehensible by its ubiquity, there was room enough in what she had left me for endless imaginings, for an infinite set of Margos. — John Green

I wanted to create comics as soon as a I learned humans were behind them, that they were not natural phenomena like trees and boulders. — Art Spiegelman

There's a therapeutic aspect to all making, but the nature of working is to compress, condense, and shape stuff, not to just expunge it. It's not just an exorcism. — Art Spiegelman

As we walked, I kept taking glances at her through the crowd, quick snapshots: a photographic series entitled Perfection Stands Still While Mortals Walk Past. — John Green

DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS A MIDGET MUST GO! — Art Spiegelman

The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightening, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us. I could have seen it rain frogs. I could have stepped foot on Mars. I could have been eaten by a whale. I could have married the Queen of England or survived months at sea. But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman. — John Green

Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will — John Green

All those poeple living in their paper houses, burning they paper future to stay warm. All the paper kids, drinking paper beer some bum bought for them at the paper convienience store ... All this things paper-thin and paper-frail. — John Green

And I don't really have anyone upon whom I want to rain down my wrath, I said, because in truth I didn't. I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies. Example: Historically, Germany has had more enemies than Luxembourg, Margo Roth Spiegelman was Germany. And Great Britain. And the United States. And czarist Russia. Me, I'm Luxembourg. Just sitting around, tending sheep, and yodeling. — John Green

Q, you're going to go to Duke. You're going to be a very successful lawyer-or-something and get married and have babies and live your whole little life, and then you're going to die, and in the last moments, when you're chocking on your own bile in the nursing home, you'll say to yourself:'Well, I wasted my whole goddamned life, but at least I broke into SeaWorld with Margo Roth Spiegelman my senior year of high school. At least I carpe'd that one diem. — John Green

I always got very nervous whenever I heard that Margo was about to show up, on account of how she was the most fantastically gorgeous creature that God has ever created. — John Green

With any work worth its salt, you have to trust the author enough to take its measure. And if you apply too many preconceptions, you are not taking its measure. — Art Spiegelman

I saw a pattern forming, like a series of skipping stones that sent ripples through the generations: all the granddaughters and grandmothers who loved each other, all the mothers left stranded in between. — Nadja Spiegelman

The thing about Margo Roth Spiegelman is that really all I could ever do was let her talk, and then when she stopped talking encourage her to go on, due to the facts that 1. I was incontestably in love with her, and 2. She was absolutely unprecedented in every way, and 3. She never really asked me any questions, so the only way to avoid silence was to keep her talking. — John Green

Instead of yelling at a TV set, I get to talk. — Art Spiegelman

I became a degenerate artist. My parents were shaped by their own experiences, and artists weren't so useful in the death camps. — Art Spiegelman

You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves. I mean, I could hate you for being massively unpunctual and for never being interested in anything other than Margo Roth Spiegelman, and for, like, never asking me about how it's going with my girlfriend - but I don't give a shit, man, because you're you. My parents have a shit ton of black Santas, but that's okay. They're them. I'm too obsessed with a reference website to answer my phone sometimes when my friends call, or my girlfriend. That's okay, too. That's me. You like me anyway. And I like you. You're funny, and you're smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually. — John Green

Sometimes I don't feel like a functioning adult — Art Spiegelman

Forever is composed of nows. - Margo Roth Spiegelman — John Green

And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn't being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty. She felt the unscaleable wall surrounding her. I thought of her asleep on the carpet with only that jagged sliver of sky above her. Maybe Margo felt comfortable there because Margo the person lived like that all the time: in an abandoned room with blocked-out windows, the only light pouring in through holes in the roof. Yes. The fundamental mistake I had always made - and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make - was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl. — John Green

Samuel Beckett once said, "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."
...On the other hand, he SAID it. — Art Spiegelman

I always had more allergies toward the superhero comics than the others. I thought those were aimed more toward the people who would beat me up. — Art Spiegelman

I always have been and will remain someone who loves real, 3D, substantial books. And I don't believe that it's a wistful, nostalgic interest like vinyl collectors. It's not the same thing. — Art Spiegelman

I think as soon as I figured out - and this must have been incredibly young - that comic books were made by humans, rather than being natural phenomenon likes trees or rocks, I just wanted to be one of the people who did that. So I was copying all kinds of cartoons that I was reading, comic books, and eventually learned how to draw cartoon books step-by-step and just, I don't know, I'm not an especially quick learner, but I sure was a dedicated one. — Art Spiegelman

One way of understanding a graphic novel is that it's an ambitious comic and one way or another my comics have had ambitions. I have no problem with escapism. When I get my depressions all I want to do is escape reality. — Art Spiegelman

Comics seem to be cooking these days. It's like being a rock star. — Art Spiegelman

I live in my own bubble. I was looking for an audience that wouldn't necessarily be looking for escapism when they came to my comics. — Art Spiegelman

I would say that, in the future, the book will be reserved for things that function best as a book. So, if I need a textbook that's going to be out of date because of new technological inventions, you're better off having it where you can download the supplements or the update. — Art Spiegelman

At the end of the day, our recovery must be based not on shame or perfectionism or the need to impress others, but on our willingness to be kind to ourselves. — Erica Spiegelman

Style is a capitalist invention. It's a trademark. It's very useful in the world of commerce to have a good trademark, but it wasn't my first concern. I got restless — Art Spiegelman

A manifesto, a diary, a crumpled suicide note, and a still relevant love letter. — Art Spiegelman

Hey, I notice you look like you're coming down off a meth binge and smell vaguely of algae. Were you perchance dancing with a snakebit Margo Roth Spiegelman a couple of hours ago? — John Green

Disaster is my muse. — Art Spiegelman

What's called art now probably has some legitimate things happening in it, but I've become more and more distrustful of a lot of it because it seems like an extension of the fashion trade and the stock market. — Art Spiegelman

Margo was so beautiful that even her fake smiles were convincing. (54) — John Green

Yes, life always takes the side of life, and somehow the victims are blamed. But it wasn't the best people who survived, nor did the best ones die. It was random! — Art Spiegelman

And so when she left, she left for good. But I could not believe she had left for a perpetual journey. She had, I felt sure, left for a place - a place where she could stay long enough for it to matter, long enough for the next leaving to feel as good as the last one had. There is a corner of the world somewhere far away from here where no one knows what "Margo Roth Spiegelman" means. And Margo is sitting in that corner, scrawling in her black notebook. — John Green

You're going to be a very successful lawyer-or-something and get married and have babies and live your whole little life, and then you're going to die, and in your last moments, when you're choking on your own bile in the nursing home, you'll say to yourself: 'Well I wasted my whole goddamned life, but at least I broke into SeaWorld with Margo Roth Spiegelman in my senior year of high school. At least I carpe'd the one diem — John Green

No matter what I accomplish, it doesn't seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz. — Art Spiegelman

To die, it's easy. But you have to struggle for life. — Art Spiegelman

That night,I lay on my side,staring out the window into the invisible world outside.I kept trying to fall asleep,but then my eyes would dart open,just to check.I couldn't help but hope that Margo Roth Spiegelman would return to my window and drag my tired ass through one more night I'd never forget. — John Green

No, darling! To die it's easy ... But you have to stuggle for life! — Art Spiegelman

I'm not talking about YOUR book now, but look at how many books have already been written about the Holocaust. What's the point? People haven't changed ... Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust. — Art Spiegelman

Well, I am not 100 percent sure of the definition of polemic, but it wasn't meant to convince anybody of anything. — Art Spiegelman

Physical space between us evaporates. We play the broken strings of our instruments one last time — John Green

I think a lot of America turned to art and culture after Sept. 11. I know the sales of bibles went shooting up, but so did the sales of poetry. I think in a crisis one looks to one's culture, partially to give validation to why one would want that culture to survive. — Art Spiegelman

Its a paper town, with paper houses and paper people, everything is uglier up close. — John Green

The technology that threatens to kill off books as we know them - the 'physical book,' a new phrase in our language - is also making the physical book capable of being more beautiful than books have been since the middle ages. — Art Spiegelman

Radar half raised his hand. I dutifully called on him. Yes, I was wondering if it would be possible for you to write a sestina about Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts? Your six words are: pink, round, firmness, succulent, supple, and pillowy. — John Green

A normal mother might have said, "Hey, I notice you look like you're coming down off a meth binge and smell vaguely of algae. Were you perchance dancing with a snakebit Margo Roth Spiegelman a couple hours ago?" But no. They preferred dreams. I showered, put on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. I was late, but then again, I was always late. — John Green

Hospitals have missed the point that the best way to improve the patient experience is to build better engagement with their employees, who will then provide better service and health care to patients. — Paul Spiegelman

If they brought you here,They'll put you to work. THEY'RE not readyto kill you YET. — Art Spiegelman

I became comfortable with what I knew would be the process of trying to pick up the pieces of brain that were in the rubble and tried to make some mosaic out of the pieces and that that would be the trajectory. — Art Spiegelman

I laugh, but I'm still thinking about ten-year-old Margo having a crush on ten-year-old me. — John Green

Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week ... Then you could see what it is, friends! ... — Art Spiegelman

Comics can be pernicious, fascist propaganda or anti-authoritarian. The ones that shaped me were particularly anti-authoritarian. — Art Spiegelman

Here is Margo Roth Spiegelman, five feet away from me, her lips chapped to cracking, makeup-less, dirt in her fingernails, her eyes silent. I've never seen her eyes dead like that, but then again, maybe I've never seen her eyes before. — John Green

I know this is insane, but I somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through! I guess it's some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did. — Art Spiegelman

In 1908, you could easily earn $20 to $200 as a cartoonist. What's amazing is that it's still true! — Art Spiegelman

But there she is, and I am watching her through the Plexiglas, and she looks like Margo Roth Spiegelman, this girl I have known since I was two
this girl who was an idea that I loved. — John Green