Robert Crumb Quotes

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Robert Crumb

Profession : Artist

Birth : August 30, 1943

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.

Robert Crumb

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.

Robert Crumb

The only burning passion I'm sure I have, is the passion for sex.

Robert Crumb

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.

Robert Crumb

In the fall of 1968, I became attractive to women. One day I was an ignored schlub in the street, then suddenly all these good-looking women were interested in me.

Robert Crumb

When I go back to America, after a few days I am once again filled with this kind of angry alienation and disgust with this thing there that America has got - you have no idea how pervasive it is there. The public relations and propaganda put out by the corporate mono-culture there is so pervasive.

Robert Crumb

You can't make everybody love you. It's an exercise in futility, and it's probably not even a good idea to try.

Robert Crumb

You must thank the gods for art, those of us who have been fortunate enough to stumble onto this means of venting our craziness, our meanness, our towering disgust.

Robert Crumb

When people say 'What are underground comics?' I think the best way you can define them is just the absolute freedom involved... we didn't have anyone standing over us.

Robert Crumb

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

Robert Crumb

When I was younger, I just lived my life on paper. I didn't really live in the real world very much. As a consequence, I couldn't cope with the real world and real people very well. That in itself became life threatening, so I had to stop drawing so much and learn how to cope with people.

Robert Crumb

The fine-art world knows very little about the cartoon world.

Robert Crumb

I was raised Catholic and I went to church until I was 16. I went through a phase when I was 15 of being quite fanatically Catholic. I was going to church a lot, receiving communion, saying the Rosary, praying, all that stuff. But when I started scrutinizing it, it just fell apart so quickly.

Robert Crumb

Everything that is strong in me has gone into my art work.

Robert Crumb

I felt so painfully isolated that I vowed I would get revenge on the world by becoming a famous cartoonist.

Robert Crumb

I have always had an abiding interest in that type of female anatomy.

Robert Crumb

I moved further and further away from mass entertainment. The sexual element became increasingly sinister and bizarre. Don't blame me! The bastards drove me to it! They all backed off after that!

Robert Crumb

Oh, yes. 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.

Robert Crumb

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

Robert Crumb

With comics, you've got to develop some kind of shorthand. You can't make every drawing look like a detailed etching. The average reader actually doesn't want all that detail; it interferes with the flow of the reading process.

Robert Crumb