As "Calvin and Hobbes" went on, the writing pushed the drawings into greater complexity. One of the jokes I really like is that the fantasies are drawn more realistically than reality, since that says a lot about what's going on in Calvin's head.

Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.

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... 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.

If you can't control your peanut butter, you can't expect to control your life.

People pay more attention when they think you’re up to something.

That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.

I 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.