Quotes from Stephan Pastis

I like characters who have blind spots and are full of themselves, but there also needs to be vulnerability.

Basically, I learned to read by reading 'Peanuts,' just wanting to know what they were saying.

Basically, I learned to read by reading 'Peanuts,' just wanting to know what they were saying. I was 4 or 5 or whatever. I think it's a fairly common story.

I think it might surprise the average person how angry people can get over the comics.

Brits have a better sense of humor in most ways. It's darker, more cutting.

A biscuit in the States is something you would put gravy on with dinner, and it's not sweet in the least!

Sticking to my schedule, I've gotten over seven months ahead, which allowed me to write a 'Pearls Before Swine' movie script for the big screen.

I want to shake things up like 'Bloom County' did.

The principles of comedy are the principles of comedy. I can hear funny.

I don't like drawing characters facing right.

The only thing I learn on a daily basis from law school is that I disliked it and the law so much that it's constantly this fire at my heels.

If somebody is not on the same page with me humor wise, I can't give them that.

Maybe the bar is low, but most of the strips that are 50, 60, 70 years old that are on their second or third generation of artists, the humor is pretty bland. There are others by people that were raised on 'Family Guy' or 'South Park' that are edgier. Mine's not as edgy as those, but it's edgier than 'Beetle Bailey.'

The wonderful thing about a book is that you have a canvas that is 300 pages wide, and it's all free space. You can make a piece of art as big as you want and whatever shape you want.

You can write a little and can draw a little, but there's necessarily a limitation on both in a comic strip, since it appears in such a tiny space.

I like to make fun of Jeffy [of Family Circus] the most, because I know the grown-up Jeff Keane personally and enjoy ridiculing him.

Eternal condemnation is the key to selling doorknobs.

A pioneer of tomorrow whose only challenge now is to remain humble.

So to get there, he is going to have to rely on the same network of Goodwill trucks that the polar bears use to pick up our discarded fax machines.

When in doubt, give a character big, blown-up eyes and puffy lips.

This is every creative person's dream - a hobby that I'm lucky enough to get paid for.

Repeats are the worst, and 'Peanuts' was the one that started that. They don't rerun the news, do they? They don't repeat any other part of the paper. Why do they do it in the comics?

We need more cartoonists to truly retire when they retire, and not run repeats.

Repeats are the absolute soul-crushing killers of the comics page.