Jules Feiffer Quotes

#1. I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy, I was deprived. Then they told me underpriviledged was overused, I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime, but I have a great vocabulary.

Jules Feiffer

#2. Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid.

Jules Feiffer

#3. Good swiping is an art in itself.

Jules Feiffer

#4. I think we overrate experience and what we've been through in terms of our success at doing the work we do. There are many people who get beat up, who suffer, who are victimized, and then they sit down to write and they write crap.

Jules Feiffer

#5. There's some brain damage, but it may be that very brain damage that allows me to do the work I do.

Jules Feiffer

#6. Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.

Jules Feiffer

#7. Over the years, I discovered over and over again that once you lose control, you have a chance of getting good at it. And once you're controlling the work, it's not going to be very good, or it won't be as good as it should be.

Jules Feiffer

#8. If you are not able to communicate successfully between yourself and yourself, how are you supposed to make it with the strangers outside?

Jules Feiffer

#9. Be warned against all 'good' advice because 'good' advice is necessarily 'safe' advice, and though it will undoubtedly follow a sane pattern, it will very likely lead one into total sterility
one of the crushing problems of our time.

Jules Feiffer

#10. I told the doctor I was overtired, anxiety-ridden, compulsively active, constantly depressed, with recurring fits of paranoia. Turns out I'm normal.

Jules Feiffer

#11. I've never met a cartoonist who isn't quirky or weird in some ways.

Jules Feiffer

#12. Design is important because chaos is so hard.

Jules Feiffer

#13. When I write a play, my whole intent at bottom is to get the audience to be in the cast, to get that audience on stage with the actors and to get them thoroughly involved in what's going on.

Jules Feiffer

#14. Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of false confidence.

Jules Feiffer

#15. Imagination continually frustrates tradition; that is its function.

Jules Feiffer

#16. The artwork had very little to do with the thought process, and the writing too, for that matter. What happens, happens, and it happens outside the brain.

Jules Feiffer

#17. I'm well beyond dyslexic: I have no sense of direction; I never know where I am.

Jules Feiffer

#18. Design is so important because chaos is so hard

Jules Feiffer

#19. Writing, I explained, was mainly an attempt to out-argue one's past; to present events in such a light that battles lost in life were either won on paper or held to a draw.

Jules Feiffer

#20. We are all continually embarking on first drafts, in every aspect of our lives.

Jules Feiffer

#21. There's no rap against comics that isn't true. They were sexist, they were racist, you name it - and they kind of gloried in that.

Jules Feiffer

#22. Eventually, if it's on your mind, you stumble on it. You need a certain amount of luck and persistence.

Jules Feiffer

#23. We want playmates we can own.

Jules Feiffer

#24. Kids are in ongoing need of support, and they get various versions of it from grownups which aren't legitimate - a grownup's version of what we think you should have. We tell you what creativity is, and we even tell you what you're thinking.

Jules Feiffer

#25. I was never interested in the two-party system per se. I was interested in how authority was abused by government, and how lies were told, and rewritten, to seem to be true. I came up out of a tradition of radical journalism.

Jules Feiffer

#26. It is not size or age that separates children from adults. It is responsibility.

Jules Feiffer

#27. Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?

Jules Feiffer