17 Robert Crumb Quotes

Robert Crumb quotes

1. Though I might be very fond of particular individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world.

2. Killing yourself is a major commitment, it takes a kind of courage. Most people just lead lives of cowardly desperation. It's kinda half suicide where you just dull yourself with substances.

3. When I come up against the real world, I just vacillate.

4. I knew I was weird by the time I was four. I knew I wasn't like other boys. I knew I was more fearful. I didn't like the rough and tumble most boys were into. I knew I was a sissy.

5. The Crumb Family Website

1. I would call myself a Gnostic. Which means, I'm interested in pursuing and understanding the spiritual nature of things. A Gnostic is somebody seeking knowledge of that aspect of reality.

2. I draw the line at some things. Some things I won't do for any amount of money. Like for instance, there's a couple of CEOs of very large corporations that offered me lots of money to do special pictures for them. And I just refused to do that. Even if it was a million dollars I wouldn't do it.

3. I do covers for CDs and LPs of music that I like, reissues of old-time music, and then I'm inspired to make some kind of drawing based on this love of the music. I don't do album covers or CD covers for groups or musicians I don't like or have no interest in.

4. I use the old Strathmore vellum surface paper, which is the best paper you can get in the Western world for ink line drawing. It has a good, hard surface.

5. In my midteens I went through a brief stage of religious fanaticism, but it was very much about just saying prayers and stuff like that, reciting rosaries and spending a lot of time on that kind of Catholic ritual.

6. Most of my adult life I had this towering contempt for America.

7. I still can't spend a lot of money on records at collector prices. There's something in me that just won't allow me to do that. But I will trade my artwork, which I know is worth thousands of dollars.

8. I'm just a negative person, a deeply negative person. I see the worst aspects of everything.

9. I use photos a lot for drawing people and personalities, but they're almost never photos that I've taken.

10. You don’t have journalists over there anymore, what they have is public relations people. That’s what they have over in America now. Two-hundred and fifty thousand people in public relations. And a dwindling number of actual reporters and journalists.

11. If you're trying to work the art game, if you're like Andy Warhol or something, then you're in with cake-eaters of society. You want to get in with them and please them and get their money.

12. They were just snapshots, nothing special, nothing particularly artistic. They were used for utility purposes. (On photographs of mundane streetscapes he had Stanley Something-or-other take in Sacramento in 1988 to serve as backgrounds to his cartoons. People don't draw it, all this crap, people don't focus attention on it because it's ugly, it's bleak, it's depressing... But, this is the world we live in; I wanted my work to reflect that, the background reality of urban life. )