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

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

Israel's creation was politically amazing and caused by a number of unusual events. And I understand. For centuries, Jews endured horrible suffering, and like other people, deserve the right to self-determination, but the way Israel is going now frightens me. Jews make awkward colonial overlords.

Harvey Pekar

I think you can find all the elements that you can find in great literature in mundane experiences.

Harvey Pekar

People who are readers of fiction aren't particularly interested in comic books.

Harvey Pekar

You can find heroism everyday, like guys working terrible jobs because they've got to support their families. Or as far as humor, the things I see on the job, on the street, are far funnier than anything you'll ever see on TV.

Harvey Pekar

I'm from the beatnik generation, where everybody wanted to be a poet or writer or something. And at that time, I was a jazz critic, and I was always thinking, theorizing about what makes great art or what's important in art.

Harvey Pekar

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 influenced by autobiographical writers like Henry Miller, and I had actually done some autobiographical prose. But I just thought that comics were like virgin territory. There was so much to be done. It excited me. I couldn't draw very well. I could write scripts and storyboard style using stick figures and balloons and captions.

Harvey Pekar

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

Harvey Pekar

It makes you feel good to know that there's other people afflicted like you.

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

People writing about me have said that I've influenced a lot of people, and there are some artists who have credited me with influencing them.

Harvey Pekar

I'd like to see the comics' style expanded. I'd like to see artists synthesize traditional comics arts style with fine-arts styles or whatever. I like to see innovation. I don't like it when an art form becomes stagnant.

Harvey Pekar

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

Harvey Pekar

I guess I wanted to show people, among other things, that you don't have to be a hero to get through cancer. You can be a craven coward and get through. You have to stay on your medication and take your treatments, that's all.

Harvey Pekar

I don't write about certain arguments I have with my wife. I'd get my head torn off if wrote about certain things.

Harvey Pekar

The way I write is, I listen to things in my head, and then I copy them down. I memorize conversations and things like that; I seem to be able to do that pretty well. I suppose in that respect there's some improvisation, although I work over the stuff after I've got it down on paper.

Harvey Pekar

I want to keep doing as much work as I can, and I want to keep the level high. I'm wondering if something is going to happen to me to screw it up.

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

I wake up every morning in a cold sweat, regardless of how well things went the day before. And put that I said that in a somewhat but not completely tongue-in-cheek way.

Harvey Pekar