Quotes By Harvey Pekar

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.

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'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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

I'm trying to get every man involved in art, into experimental music, or painting, or novel-writing.

American Splendor is just an ongoing journal. It's an ongoing autobiography. I started it when I was in my early 30s, and I just keep going.

I think comics have far more potential than a lot of people realize.

I like to go back over history and check out what people have written and whether I agree with it or not.

I really don't have a lot in common with the people who attend the Comic Con. It's like assuming that all people who write prose are the same.

It makes you feel good to know that there's other people afflicted like you.

I wake up every morning in a cold sweat, regardless of how well things went the day before. And put that I said that in a somewhat but not completely tongue-in-cheek way.

I'm a guy that likes to sit in one place.

Letterman... he got his problems. We don't get along too well.

It's extremely seldom that anybody wants me to change what I've written about them. Generally I portray them in a good light, if they're friends.

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.