I didn't have a job. Employers were afraid of losing their reputations. I didn't have a reputation. I had zilch. So, I had the freedom, which unemployment gives you, and that was to behave as badly as I believed I should under the circumstances. And the circumstances were quite awful.
Jules FeifferWhen I am working a book, I go through my library and take a look through some of the great cartoonists of the past, like Cliff Sterrett, who did "Polly and Her Pals," or Winsor McCay who did "A Little Nemo in Slumberland," and Herriman - and I just looked through these guys and looked for somebody to steal. You know, looked for who I could swipe, or turn into - who's work I will turn into my work. And I still use, after all these years, these artists as inspirations. So, here in my eighties, I go back to when I was eight for my inspiration.
Jules FeifferI found it was my good fortune to somehow be able to work in these forms that I loved when I was a kid. I love movies and I could write screenplays. I love theater and I could write plays. I mean, they would be my own, I could never write what was used to be called the well-made play. But my first play, "Little Murders," turned out to be a great success and a great influence on plays at that time.
Jules FeifferWhen people started reading me and talking to me about the work, they didn't say how funny, or how satiric, or how brilliant, or how this or how that, they said, how'd you get away with it? How'd you get that into print?
Jules Feiffer