Quotes from 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.

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.

I'm just a negative person, a deeply negative person. I see the worst aspects of everything.

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

I always had a sketchbook with me when I was young. I was hiding behind it, basically, hiding behind drawing because I couldn't cope with people in real life; I was very shy and very nervous around people.

Yeah, I was a child of American popular culture.

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!

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

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.

There's many heroic underappreciated investigative journalists.

Some things I won't do for any amount of money. Like for instance, there's a couple of CEOs of very large corporations that offered me lots of money to do special pictures for them. And I just refused to do that. Even if it was a million dollars I wouldn't do it.

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

In my midteens I went through a brief stage of religious fanaticism, but it was very much about just saying prayers and stuff like that, reciting rosaries and spending a lot of time on that kind of Catholic ritual.

You don't have to be a Fundamentalist Christian to be interested in the Bible. It's really a fascinating mythology.

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.

People still make me nervous, but gradually over the years I've developed kind of like a public personality, so I can talk. I have my spiel, I have my stories.

I do covers for CDs and LPs of music that I like, reissues of old-time music, and then I'm inspired to make some kind of drawing based on this love of the music. I don't do album covers or CD covers for groups or musicians I don't like or have no interest in.

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

The work itself is what motivates me. I like my own stuff, you know? I like the way it looks. I do it to please myself first.

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

The French hold onto their traditions. I was always so alienated in America. My work was this constant reaction to that.

The comics are where all the crazy subconscious stuff comes out.

We were always drawing comics as kids. My brother Charles made me draw comics. I was very much under his domination. He was actually a much stronger artistic visionary than I was.

I didn't invent anything; it's all there in the culture; it's not a big mystery. I just combine my personal experience with classic cartoon stereotypes.