Quotes By Harvey Pekar

My work looks like a comic book in form, but it's not a typical comic book in content. I write autobiographical stuff.

I don't mind if I show myself being cheap or unreasonable sometimes.

It didn't take long to establish myself, as far as people thinking my work was good. They liked it from the start.

I'm doing research for a large comic book on the Beat Generation guys - Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and those guys.

You can find heroism everyday, like guys working terrible jobs because they've got to support their families. Or as far as humor, the things I see on the job, on the street, are far funnier than anything you'll ever see on TV.

I've probably had my day in the sun. I think I've influenced a lot of comic book writers.

Misery loves company. There's a lot to that.

Things improved a little bit in the '80s; there was kind of a revival of alternative comics, but then they went downhill in the '90s.

I came up with American Splendor. Some people think it's American Squalor.

I think the people who would be the least interested in my work would be people who read lots of comic books.

I don't write about certain arguments I have with my wife. I'd get my head torn off if wrote about certain things.

I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist.

Some of the most valuable stuff I do has to do with my dissenting from the general opinion about people in movements.

I thought I had a great opportunity when I started doing my comic book in 1972. I thought there was so much territory to work in.

I'd been familiar with comics, and I'd collected 'em when I was a kid, but after I got into junior high school, there wasn't much I was interested in.

The film's success so far involves winning a couple of prizes at Cannes and Sundance, and getting some very nice reviews in newspapers and magazines. That hasn't had a big impact on my life yet.

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.

I think you can find all the elements that you can find in great literature in mundane experiences.

I decided I was going to tell these stories. I went around and met Crumb. He was the cartoonist. I started realizing comics weren't just kid stuff.

It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing.

People who are readers of fiction aren't particularly interested in comic books.

I think you can do anything with comics that you could do in just about any art form.

Everybody's like everybody else, and everybody's different from everybody else.

I try and write the way things happen. I don't try and fulfill people's wishes.

As a matter of fact, I deliberately look for the mundane, because I feel these stories are ignored. The most influential things that happen to virtually all of us are the things that happen on a daily basis. Not the traumas.

I continue to be disappointed that people don't try and diversify the kind of work they are doing in comics.

I'm always shook up and nervous and I've got the hospital record to prove it.

Plays have been made of my comics.

People writing about me have said that I've influenced a lot of people, and there are some artists who have credited me with influencing them.

There hasn't been enough change in comics to suit me. I don't know why exactly.