Harvey Pekar Quotes

I'm from the beatnik generation, where everybody wanted to be a poet or writer or something. And at that time, I was a jazz critic, and I was always thinking, theorizing about what makes great art or what's important in art.

I can't write in a whole lot of different styles, trying to please the highbrows one time and the lowbrows the next. I pretty much have a basic style I employ.

The way I write is, I listen to things in my head, and then I copy them down. I memorize conversations and things like that; I seem to be able to do that pretty well. I suppose in that respect there's some improvisation, although I work over the stuff after I've got it down on paper.

I was influenced by autobiographical writers like Henry Miller, and I had actually done some autobiographical prose. But I just thought that comics were like virgin territory. There was so much to be done. It excited me. I couldn't draw very well. I could write scripts and storyboard style using stick figures and balloons and captions.

A respectable-sized audience hasn't really been able to follow developments in jazz since the free jazz movement in the '60s. Some of them can't even get with John Coltrane. Audiences are diminishing more and more rapidly. Some of the top young musicians with something new to say can't get record companies to put out their stuff.

I concentrate, more than I think virtually any comic book artist has in the past, on the so-called mundane details of every day life - quotidian life. What happens to a person during a working day, marital relations, and stuff like that.

I wanted to write literature that pushed people into their lives rather than helping people escape from them.

My parents' work ethic amazed me. How could they put in such long hours, day after day?
Part of the reason was to keep the family going - to keep me going. I realized that, although we had different values derived from different cultures and wouldn't agree on certain issues, they were good people, incredible people, and I loved and respected them.

I was 16 years old, and I was just flailing around, looking for an interest. I heard, you know, these jazz records. They were modern records, at the time in the '50s, and I realized that I didn't fully get what was going on. But I liked a lot of what I heard.

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.

Every ethnic group thinks they are the chosen ones. ...

I actually took them all on quite handily, although I learned when I came to study the issue that I was completely wrong. I also came to believe that the war on drugs is one of the last vestiges of institutionalized racism in our society.

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

Comics are words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.

I'm kind of concerned about 'Ego & Hubris' because I'm thinking that people will read it and maybe even be entertained by it, but at the end of it, you know, they'll wonder, 'Why did this guy write this? What was the point of it?'

I always wanted praise, and I always wanted attention; I won't lie to you. I was a jazz critic, and that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, 'What could I do? I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act or anything like that. OK, I can write.'

I called up my grandparents who I hadn't spoken to for over three years. I called my mother, who I had recently told to stop calling lest I contact the police. I sat with them all and it was normal and fun and good. I'm even ready - maybe - to speak to my father. Superman doesn't get upset at the people who shoot bullets at him. I get why, now.

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

I think the people who would be the least interested in my work would be people who read lots of comic books.

Praise from people I respect can get me through times of no money better than money can get me through times of no praise.

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

If there is something to worry about, my mind has a tendency to worry about it. That can cut two ways. It can really keep you on the ball, but if you worry about every little thing, it's not a good use of time and energy.

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

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

There was a survey done a few years ago that affected me greatly. it was discovered that intelligent people either estimate their intelligence accurately or slightly underestimate themselves, but stupid people overestimate their intelligence and by huge margins. (And these were things like straight up math tests, not controversial IQ tests.)

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.

I've probably had my day in the sun. I think I've influenced a lot of comic book writers.

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

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

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've just been writing stuff down as it comes to me. I haven't thought, 'Let me write some major opus here.'

Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.

When I was a kid, back in the '40s, I was a voracious comic book reader. And at that time, there was a lot of patriotism in the comics. They were called things like 'All-American Comics' or 'Star-Spangled Comics' or things like that. I decided to do a logo that was a parody of those comics, with 'American' as the first word.

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.

It didn't take long to establish myself, as far as people thinking my work was good. They liked it from the start.

I looked at her when she was saying this and I realized that there is absolutely nothing you can say to a person who would feel comfortable suggesting something like that, let alone a direct accusation.

Nationalism and ethnic pride, in the long run, delay human development, and the misery they cause must be recognized. If enough people saw that , maybe we wouldn't have so many wars.

I'm just tired of people saying I'm a self-hating Jew because I'm critical of Israel or make fun of old Jewish ladies. I do not hate myself. And Jews who criticize Israel aren't necessarily mentally ill.

I'm pretty aggressive, and maybe obnoxious, about trying to get work.

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.

Sometimes I want to convey something complex philosophically, and sometimes I just want to portray myself in a situation that I think other people have been in many times, but it hasn't been written about much.

I think that the so-called average person often exhibits a great deal of heroism in getting through an ordinary day ...

Since about 1980 Kenny Werner has been one of jazz's unsung heroes

Life is about women, gigs, an' bein' creative.

Israel's creation was politically amazing and caused by a number of unusual events. And I understand. For centuries, Jews endured horrible suffering, and like other people, deserve the right to self-determination, but the way Israel is going now frightens me. Jews make awkward colonial overlords.

I don't want to play myself up as a hero, because it would make me unbelievable. I'd rather settle for people thinking that I'm a bum, but digging my stories, than liking me and not being able to believe in my stories. That's one reason I've been hard on myself, because I want my stuff to be believable.

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.

And no business can possibly equate happy workers (community) with profit (effectiveness). Happy workers are much more productive workers and hence contribute to profit, but no organization is formed for the idea of pleasing its employees.

I'd like to see the comics' style expanded. I'd like to see artists synthesize traditional comics arts style with fine-arts styles or whatever. I like to see innovation. I don't like it when an art form becomes stagnant.

There's no limitation on comics, nothing. From a logical standpoint, how can there be a limitation on comics? You can use any word in the dictionary. You can put them in any order you want to. You can use a vast variety of illustrating styles. People could do all sorts of things.

Am I a guy who writes about himself in a comic book, or am I just a character in that book? If I die, will that character keep going, or will he just fade away?

I guess I wanted to show people, among other things, that you don't have to be a hero to get through cancer. You can be a craven coward and get through. You have to stay on your medication and take your treatments, that's all.

I want to keep doing as much work as I can, and I want to keep the level high. I'm wondering if something is going to happen to me to screw it up.

I kept on buying records and listening to them. Finally, I was able to hear the relationship between the jazz improvisers' solos and the underlying structure that it's based on, the chord progression. That was pretty easy to do in the swing era, y'know, when jazz was, like, pop music, you know. It had made the charts and everything like that.

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'm always shook up and nervous and I've got the hospital record to prove it.

It dawned on me that comics were not an intrinsically limited medium. There was a tremendous amount of things you could do in comics that you couldn't do in other art forms - but no one was doing it. I figured if I'd make a try at it, I'd at least be a footnote in history.

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 don't think I made any really big mistakes; it's just that I chose something difficult to do. Looking back, I suppose I should be grateful that I got as far as I got.

Although a security guard is ostensibly there to provide security, his actual role is to give the illusion of safety to suburban women. If someone wants to do something dangerous, a security guard is helpless to stop them. Most older security guards understand this. If you're a yuppie in a suit, you will never get stopped. If you're a bike messenger, they're on you in a heartbeat. Go stand in an office building lobby and watch if you don't believe me.

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.

It's the stuff that happens right in front of your face when there's no routine and everything is unexpected. That's what I want to write about.

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 realize that I'm pretty flawed, but you know - I haven't killed anybody yet.