Quotes by Harvey Pekar

About Harvey Pekar:

Harvey Lawrence Pekar was an American underground comic book writer, music critic, and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a well-received film adaptation of the same name.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I have to be a freelance writer for the rest of my life, unless I get some kind of real lucky break. But other than that, I'll always have to work. I always worry about whether my stuff is going to get over. Will they like this, will they like that?

Harvey Pekar

I was sort of on a mission with 'American Splendor.' I wanted to try to prove that comics could do things. I wanted to expand them beyond superheroes and talking animals. And I knew that was going to take a long time. But I just started writing an au...

Harvey Pekar

I concentrate, more than I think virtually any comic book artist has in the past, on the so-called mundane details of every day life - quotidian life. What happens to a person during a working day, marital relations, and stuff like that.

Harvey Pekar

The film's success so far involves winning a couple of prizes at Cannes and Sundance, and getting some very nice reviews in newspapers and magazines. That hasn't had a big impact on my life yet.

Harvey Pekar

I write about my life, choosing incidents that I think will be, for one reason or another, significant to people. Often because they may have experienced the same things.

Harvey Pekar

Everybody's like everybody else, and everybody's different from everybody else.

Harvey Pekar

I came up with American Splendor. Some people think it's American Squalor.

Harvey Pekar

I really don't have a lot in common with the people who attend the Comic Con. It's like assuming that all people who write prose are the same.

Harvey Pekar

I think comics have far more potential than a lot of people realize.

Harvey Pekar

I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist.

Harvey Pekar

I'm doing research for a large comic book on the Beat Generation guys - Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and those guys.

Harvey Pekar

Misery loves company. There's a lot to that.

Harvey Pekar

As a matter of fact, I deliberately look for the mundane, because I feel these stories are ignored. The most influential things that happen to virtually all of us are the things that happen on a daily basis. Not the traumas.

Harvey Pekar

American Splendor is just an ongoing journal. It's an ongoing autobiography. I started it when I was in my early 30s, and I just keep going.

Harvey Pekar

I try and write the way things happen. I don't try and fulfill people's wishes.

Harvey Pekar

I'd been familiar with comics, and I'd collected 'em when I was a kid, but after I got into junior high school, there wasn't much I was interested in.

Harvey Pekar

I don't mind if I show myself being cheap or unreasonable sometimes.

Harvey Pekar

I decided I was going to tell these stories. I went around and met Crumb. He was the cartoonist. I started realizing comics weren't just kid stuff.

Harvey Pekar

There's no limitation on comics, nothing. From a logical standpoint, how can there be a limitation on comics? You can use any word in the dictionary. You can put them in any order you want to. You can use a vast variety of illustrating styles. People...

Harvey Pekar

Of course I don't think I have it made by any means. I'm too insecure, obsessive and paranoid for that.

Harvey Pekar

Even a pretty traditional comic book writer can make valuable contributions to the Internet.

Harvey Pekar

Author Bio

  • NameHarvey Pekar
  • DescriptionWriter
  • BornOctober 8, 1939
  • DiedJuly 12, 2010
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionComics Artist; Autobiographer; Writer