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The cartooning was always just an abstraction. It was an income. It was making me famous. It was allowing me to go and do other things that I’d wanted to do.

Berkeley Breathed

I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I’d bet I wouldn’t lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Paper Writing Years
Irony can elude the genius among us, sometimes.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Elude Genius Irony
That’s the conundrum of cartoon stripping, as opposed to political cartoons. When your anger is the driving force of your drawing hand, failure follows. The anger is OK, but it has to serve the interests of the heart, frankly.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Anger Hands Heart
A turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird… a social being… capable of actual affection… nuzzling its young with almost human- like compassion. Anyway, it’s dead and we’re gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Affection Anyone Capable Country Dead Social
Keep in mind that in 1985, I had a potential readership of over 50 million Americans. At that time, a good portion of those were under 30.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Mind Portions Readership
I drew the last image ever of Opus at midnight while Puccini was playing and I got rather stupid. Thirty years. A bit like saying goodbye to a child – which is ironic because I was never, never sentimental about him as many of his fans were.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Children Goodbye Stupid
Dear Lord, I’ve been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us…
BERKELEY BREATHED

Christmas Food Funny
I paint digitally now. A pity, in some ways, as the biggest price one pays is that you no longer have a finished piece of physical art to hang on a wall. I miss that terribly.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Art Missing Wall
The fan letters were mostly answered by professional people that’d done them for a living. And I didn’t have any daily connection with their response to my work. I didn’t have a relationship with my audience. And every artist should have it.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Connection Fans Living Material Relationship Work
I’ll confess right here that I secretly wish I’d have drawn a strip about a little boy with a fake tiger, going for adventures throughout the universe in spaceships of his imagination.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Adventure Boys Imagination
I happen to think nearly everybody – especially those one might find in the odd issue of ‘People’ magazine, including me – is frightfully boring, especially me. And Tom Cruise. Tom and I are alike in only this way.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Issues People Thinking
He comic page is dying; I didn’t want to go with it.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Dying Pages Want
I will go to my grave in a state of abject endless fascination that we all have the capacity to become emotionally involved with a personality that doesn’t exist.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Fascination Personality States
I was never asked to join the Editorial Cartoonists Of America. No fraternity would have me in college, either. I think they know something.
BERKELEY BREATHED

America College Thinking
My kids hear me behind my door, giggling like an idiot, and they roll their eyes at the blatant indignity of it all.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Doors Eye Kids
It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
BERKELEY BREATHED

Funny Happiness Happy

The cartooning was always just an abstraction. It was an income. It was making me famous. It was allowing me to go and do other things that I’d wanted to do.

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The cartooning was always just an abstraction. It was an income. It was making me famous. It was allowing me to go and do other things that I’d wanted to do.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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