24 Bill Watterson Quotes

Bill Watterson quotes

1. I hope some historian will confirm that I was the first cartoonist to use the word 'booger' in a newspaper comic strip.

2. So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it.

3. You can lead people to truth, but you can't make them understand it: the story of my youth, as seen from the present.

4. If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I've found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I've had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.

5. We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery- it recharges by running.

6. Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards.

7. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience.

8. Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

1. The strips I admire go farther than a gag a day, and take us into a special world.

2. Calvin: The more you know, the harder it is to take decisive action. Once you are informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of gray. You realize nothing is as clear as it first appears. Ultimately, knowledge is paralyzing. Being a man of action, I cannot afford to take that risk. Hobbes: You're ignorant, but at least you act on it.

3. A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.

4. For your information, I'm staying like this, and everyone else can just get used to it! If people don't like me the way I am, well TOUGH BEANS! It's a free country! I don't need anyone's permission to be the way I want! This is who I am - Take it or leave it!

5. I think most of us would be horrified to meet ourselves and discover what everyone else already knows about us.

6. As a kid, I knew I wanted to be either a cartoonist or an astronaut. The latter was never much of a possibility, as I don't even like riding in elevators.

7. Miss Wormwood: Calvin, your test was an absolute disgrace! It's obvious you haven't read any of the material. Our first president was not Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and you ought to be ashamed to have turned in such preposterous answers! Calvin: I just don't test well.

8. Calvin: Today for show and tell, I've brought a tiny miracle of nature: a single snowflake! I think we might all learn a lesson from how this utterly unique and exquisite crystal turns into an ordinary, boring molecule of water just like every other one when you bring it into the classroom. And now, while the analogy sinks in, I will be leaving you drips and going outside...

9. United Features had given me a development contract, which meant I was to work exclusively with them and rather than completing everything on my own and turning it in to them and having it rejected or accepted, I was working much more directly with the syndicate, turning in smaller batches much more frequently, and getting comments on them. The idea was that they would help me develop the strip and then, assuming that they liked it, it would flow into a normal contract for syndication.

10. What assurance do I have that your parenting isn't screwing me up?

11. In the right hands, a comic strip attains a beauty and elegance that, really, I would put against any other art.

12. If you give a little credit to the concept of the artist, I think you ought to indulge excesses a bit, because that reflects the personality of the writer. Now if a joke is in bad taste or it's not funny, okay, that's awhole different thing, but how you craft a joke is really what the writer's job is, and I don't think that technique should be subject to any editorial constraints.

13. I tell you all this because it's worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It's a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you'll probably take a few.

14. By golly, life's too darn short to waste time trying to please every meddlesome moron who's got an idea how I ought to be! I don't need advice! Everyone can just stay out of my face!

15. I'm yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Hollywood and Madison Avenue, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you're old and weak.

16. Girls are like slugs—they probably serve some purpose, but it's hard to imagine what.