Quotes from Mort Walker

I don't know how I'd be retired. I wake up every day with another idea.

I think it's legitimate to do satire. If you're going to write a book of satire on Marilyn Monroe or Madonna, you're not going to get their permission, because you're going to make fun of them!

I took my basic training on a golf course in Florida. Then I was on the boxing team. We did some demonstrations, and they put me in a theater one night and wanted me to box. So OK, I came out boxing with a friend - thinking we would just spar around - but the guy walked out, hit me, and knocked me out with one stroke.

My father was a dreamer who was always broke. He wanted to be a cartoonist.

Old cartoonists never retire, they just erase away.

I've always said that what cartoonists do is create friends for readers.

Laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of your heart.

Seven days without laughter makes one weak.

Comics have always helped people to read. A lot of people learned to read by reading the comics. And it's our livelihood, after all. If people don't know how to read, they're not reading our comics.

When I introduced a black soldier, Lt. Flap, in 1971, the Stars and Stripes banned the strip. They were having racial problems and thought it would increase the tensions.

It is not true that nice guys finish last. Nice guys are winners before the game even starts.

I go to the grocery store with my wife. She goes off to buy something. Where is she, anyways? So I ask the manager, 'What aisle do they keep the wives in?'

You learn just by trying and experimenting. By the time I was 14, I had my own comic strip in the Kansas City paper.

I like a happy ending. That's what I do all the time. I like to make people feel happy.

Beetle is the embodiment of everybody's resistance to authority, all the rules and regulations which you've got to follow. He deals with it in his own way. And in a way, it's sort of what I did when I was in the Army. I just oftentimes did what I wanted to do.

Most people are sort of against authority. Here's Beetle always challenging authority. I think people relate to it.

When I first started, you couldn't mention divorce or death. You couldn't show smelly socks. You couldn't show a snake. They took a skunk out of my strip one time.

Professionals don't get writer's block. I can always come up with the punch line.

You can go through comic strips alone and study the common man. You can trace our history.

Everything I know, I write about. My only research is what I did.

When I write 'Beetle Bailey,' I can always do jokes about him being lazy, and everyone gets it.

None of the established museums were treating cartoons seriously. It was considered a lesser art or no art at all, just a way to sell newspapers. Even the syndicates who were dedicated to the cartoons were throwing them out, figuring they had no value after they were printed.

I took Beetle home thinking that after the Korean War was over, I would have to take him out of the Army. I thought, well, what am I going to do with him?

At one time Tribune Syndicate emptied out their storeroom. They put tables full of original cartoons down in the lobby and said take one if you want one. The comics were simply a burden to them.