It's gratifying to hear that from people who care about comic art. I never know what to make of it when someone writes to say, "Calvin and Hobbes is the best strip in the paper. I like it even more than Nancy."
Bill WattersonI don't enjoy lettering very much, but that's the way I write and that belongs in the strip because the strip is a reflection of me.
Bill WattersonCalvin: Somewhere in Communist Russia, I'll bet there's a little boy who has never known anything but censorship and oppression. But maybe he's heard of America, and he dreams of living in this land of freedom and opportunity! Someday, I'd like to meet that little boy... and tell him the awful TRUTH ABOUT THIS PLACE!! Calvin's Dad: Calvin, be quiet and eat the stupid Lima beans.
Bill WattersonI wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks. If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you're doing good. If you can find even one person you really like, you're lucky. And if that person can also stand you, you're really lucky.
Bill WattersonI played in rock bands in college and then right out of college I moved over to Europe and lived in Ireland for about four years playing in indie rock bands. I love and miss being in a band, I still am in a band but pursuing that as a career I definitely missed it but I felt like that ship had sailed.
Bill WattersonFor 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!
Bill WattersonI have enough friends who are gamers. I actually enjoy watching them play because of the visuals and the storytelling of the games. I just love being able to go on an adventure and games are just so sophisticated now that you can just get lost in a world for 20 hours and just be someone else in a very visceral, emotional way. And that's just fascinating.
Bill WattersonSelling 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.
Bill WattersonFor no reason I can think of, I've wandered far astray. And that is how I got to where I find myself today.
Bill WattersonI very early caught on that the editor of Cincinnati Post had something specific in mind that he was looking for, and I tried to accommodate him in order to get published. I would turn out rough idea after rough idea, and he would veto eighty percent of them. I pretty much prostituted myself for six months but I couldn't please him, so he sent me packing.
Bill WattersonSaturday morning cartoons do that now, where they develop the toy and then draw the cartoon around it, and the result is the cartoon is a commercial for the toy and the toy is a commercial for the cartoon. The same thing's happening now in comic strips; it's just another way to get the competitive edge. You saturate all the different markets and allow each other to advertise the other, and it's the best of all possible worlds. You can see the financial incentive to work that way. I just think it's to the detriment of integrity in comic strip art.
Bill WattersonHappiness is being famous for your financial ability to indulge in every kind of excess.
Bill WattersonAh, the life of a newspaper cartoonist - how I miss the groupies, drugs and trashed hotel rooms!
Bill WattersonBarney's Dad was really bad so Barney hatched a plan when his dad said "Eat your peas." Barney shouted no and ran Barney tricked his mean old dad and locked him in the cellar Barney's Mom never found out where he'd gone, Cause Barney didn't tell her. There his dad spent his life eating mice and gruel With every bite for fifty years he was sorry he'd been cruel
Bill WattersonWhen I get to the drawing, I really enjoy taking a big chunk of time and working on the drawing and nothing else. That allows me to make sure that I'm really challenging the art, making each picture as interesting as I can.
Bill WattersonCreating 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... To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
Bill WattersonI don't think I'd have been in such a hurry to reach adulthood if I'd known the whole thing was going to be ad-libbed.
Bill WattersonI wasn't having any luck getting accepted anyway and it forced me to re-examine what it was that I really wanted to do. In my experience in political cartooning, I was never one of those people who read the headlines and foams at the mouth with rabid opinion that I've just got to get down on paper.
Bill WattersonI think the experience forced me to consider how interested I was in political cartooning. After I was fired, I applied to other papers but political cartooning, like all cartooning, is a very tough field to break into. Newspapers are very reluctant to hire their own cartoonists when they can get Oliphant or MacNelly through syndication for a twentieth of the price.
Bill WattersonIf comics need to be deconstructed and explained, something is really wrong with them.
Bill WattersonIn 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.
Bill WattersonCalvin: 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.
Bill WattersonThe surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.
Bill WattersonI wonder where we go when we die?” “…Pittsburgh?” “You mean if we’re good or if we’re bad?
Bill WattersonTo invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
Bill WattersonYou can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid.
Bill WattersonI was offered a job at the Cincinnati Post as their editorial cartoonist in a trial six month arrangement. The agreement was that they could fire me or I could quit with no questions asked if things didn't work out during the first few months. Sure enough, things didn't work out, and they fired me, no questions asked.
Bill WattersonCalvin: Dear Santa, before I submit life to your scrutiny, I demand to know who made YOU the matter of my fate?! Who are YOU to question my behavior, HUH??? What gives you the right?! Hobbes: Santa makes the toys, so he gets to decide who to give them to. Calvin: Oh.
Bill WattersonThat's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.
Bill WattersonMs. Wormwood: Calvin, can you tell us what Lewis and Clark did? Calvin: No, but I can recite the secret superhero origin of each member of Captain Napalm's Thermonuclear League of Liberty. Ms. Wormwood: See me after class, Calvin. Calvin: [retrospectively] I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.
Bill WattersonIt's not the medium, but the quality of perception and expression, that determines the significance of art.
Bill WattersonSince September it's just gotten colder and colder. There's less daylight now, I've noticed too. This can only mean one thing - the sun is going out. In a few more months the Earth will be a dark and lifeless ball of ice. Dad says the sun isn't going out. He says its colder because the earth's orbit is taking us farther from the sun. He says winter will be here soon. Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?
Bill WattersonAs far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.
Bill Watterson