Harvey Pekar's Quotes

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

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

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.

Plays have been made of my comics.

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

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

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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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