Jules Feiffer Quotations

I grew up to have my father's looks- my father's speech patterns-my father's posture- my father's opinions and my mother's contempt for my father

I've backed off cliffs all of my career. The best things I've done I've backed into. I never understood what I was getting into, I never started out to be a political cartoonist. There wasn't this kind of cartoonist when I started. I wanted to do traditional strips in the newspapers and backed into what I did then and backed into writing plays and backed into children's books. And what I'll back into next, I don't know, but I'll be looking forward to going backward.

I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. (Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged.) Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary.

A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears.

I love doing it and until I stop loving it, this is what I do. I loved writing for the theater for 20 years, and then I stopped. And this is what replaced it. I always need something to be passionate about.

There's no rap against comics that isn't true. They were sexist, they were racist, you name it - and they kind of gloried in that.

There's some brain damage, but it may be that very brain damage that allows me to do the work I do.

I think we overrate experience and what we've been through in terms of our success at doing the work we do. There are many people who get beat up, who suffer, who are victimized, and then they sit down to write and they write crap.

I'm well beyond dyslexic: I have no sense of direction; I never know where I am.

I've never met a cartoonist who isn't quirky or weird in some ways.

It is not size or age that separates children from adults. It is responsibility.

Jesus died to forgive our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?

Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of false confidence.

At sixteen I was stupid, confused and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?

Good swiping is an art in itself.

If you are not able to communicate successfully between yourself and yourself, how are you supposed to make it with the strangers outside?

The artwork had very little to do with the thought process, and the writing too, for that matter. What happens, happens, and it happens outside the brain.

The weekly cartoons, as were my plays, came from a sense of criticism, criticism of the times, critical of the culture, of our manners and attitudes towards each other. The children's books come from the reverse. They're more supportive, since we're living in a time where we talk more about kids and do less, we talk about balancing the budget and we do it by cutting education.

We want playmates we can own.

I grew up to have my father's looks, my father's speech patterns, my father's posture, my father's opinions, and my mother's contempt for my father.

Over the years, I discovered over and over again that once you lose control, you have a chance of getting good at it. And once you're controlling the work, it's not going to be very good, or it won't be as good as it should be.

Writing, I explained, was mainly an attempt to out-argue one's past; to present events in such a light that battles lost in life were either won on paper or held to a draw.

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.

Imagination continually frustrates tradition; that is its function.

Eventually, if it's on your mind, you stumble on it. You need a certain amount of luck and persistence.

I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I was not poor, I was needy. They told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy, I was deprived. Then they told me underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still do not have a dime but I have a great vocabulary.

We are all continually embarking on first drafts, in every aspect of our lives.

I was never interested in the two-party system per se. I was interested in how authority was abused by government, and how lies were told, and rewritten, to seem to be true. I came up out of a tradition of radical journalism.

Kids are in ongoing need of support, and they get various versions of it from grownups which aren't legitimate - a grownup's version of what we think you should have. We tell you what creativity is, and we even tell you what you're thinking.

Remember when you were a kid and the boys didn't like the girls? Only sissies liked girls? What I'm trying to tell you is that nothing's changed. You think boys grow out of not liking girls, but we don't grow out of it. We just grow horny. That's the problem. We mix up liking pussy for liking girls. Believe me, one couldn't have less to do with the other.

Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.

Be warned against all 'good' advice because 'good' advice is necessarily 'safe' advice, and though it will undoubtedly follow a sane pattern, it will very likely lead one into total sterility--one of the crushing problems of our time.

When I write a play, my whole intent at bottom is to get the audience to be in the cast, to get that audience on stage with the actors and to get them thoroughly involved in what's going on.

Design is important because chaos is so hard.

Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid.

I told the doctor I was overtired, anxiety-ridden, compulsively active, constantly depressed, with recurring fits of paranoia. Turns out I'm normal.