Stephan Pastis Strip Quotations

I more or less stalked him. I guess that's the right word, ... I waited because I knew what time he came in for his English muffin and all that. Sure enough he showed up. I had some strips I had drawn, and I walked across the room.

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.

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

Maybe the bar is low, but most of the strips that are 50, 60, 70 years old that are on their second or third generation of artists, the humor is pretty bland. There are others by people that were raised on 'Family Guy' or 'South Park' that are edgier. Mine's not as edgy as those, but it's edgier than 'Beetle Bailey.'

If you look at other strips from the 1950s, he stuck out like a sore thumb. I'm sure he probably got some of the same complaint letters that I get now,

I want to shake things up like Bloom County did, ... When I was a kid I loved Calvin and I loved Far Side and I loved Bloom County. And I loved them because they took risks. You never knew what you were going to see that day. And there's not a lot of strips that do that now.

Thomas, my 15-year-old, is effectively my editor, I've always trusted his voice, more than anybody, on the strip for years. He has one of those ears that's just tuned to the rhythm of humor, so if he says something's not funny, my stomach just hurts because I know he's right, and it's already been drawn.

I was a total stranger to him, and he let me sit down at his table and we talked for an hour, ... I took a picture with him. He looked at some of the strips that I had been doing and gave me some tips. Man, I was on cloud nine.