35+ Art Spiegelman Quotes (Complex, Graphic And Satire)

Art Spiegelman is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel Maus. He has been recognized for his work with the Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Harvey Award. Spiegelman is credited with bringing literary merit to comics and is considered one of the most important contributors to the medium.

Top 10 Art Spiegelman Quotes

1. Well, I am not 100 percent sure of the definition of polemic, but it wasn't meant to convince anybody of anything.
2. Comics are a gateway drug to literacy.
3. No matter what I accomplish, it doesn't seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz.
4. I became a degenerate artist. My parents were shaped by their own experiences, and artists weren't so useful in the death camps.
5. There's a therapeutic aspect to all making, but the nature of working is to compress, condense, and shape stuff, not to just expunge it. It's not just an exorcism.
6. With any work worth its salt, you have to trust the author enough to take its measure. And if you apply too many preconceptions, you are not taking its measure.
7. A manifesto, a diary, a crumpled suicide note, and a still relevant love letter.
8. Samuel Beckett once said, "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness." ...On the other hand, he SAID it.
9. I always have been and will remain someone who loves real, 3D, substantial books. And I don't believe that it's a wistful, nostalgic interest like vinyl collectors. It's not the same thing.
10. It's not an accident that, while bookstores are all in a tizzy, one of the more lively and alive sections is the so-called "graphic novel" section, because those are harder to replace.

Art Spiegelman Short Quotes

• Comics seem to be cooking these days. It's like being a rock star.
• Instead of yelling at a TV set, I get to talk.
• In 1908, you could easily earn $20 to $200 as a cartoonist. What's amazing is that it's still true!
• Sometimes I don't feel like a functioning adult
• To die, it's easy. But you have to struggle for life.

Art Spiegelman Famous Quotes And Sayings

I became comfortable with what I knew would be the process of trying to pick up the pieces of brain that were in the rubble and tried to make some mosaic out of the pieces and that that would be the trajectory. — Art Spiegelman

In reality, childhood is deep and rich. It's vital, mysterious, and profound. I remember my OWN childhood vividly; I knew terrible things, but I knew I mustn't let the adults *know* I knew... it would scare them. — Art Spiegelman

I think a lot of America turned to art and culture after Sept. 11. I know the sales of bibles went shooting up, but so did the sales of poetry. I think in a crisis one looks to one's culture, partially to give validation to why one would want that culture to survive. — Art Spiegelman

I know this is insane, but i somehow wish i had been in auschwitz with my parents so i could really know what they lived through! I guess it's some kind of guilt about having had an easier life than they did. — Art Spiegelman

If you're going to visit and re-visit a book, it has more reason to be a real book, because of that ability to concentrate and that relationship that you build up with it, as opposed to the relationship that you build up with your screen, rewards replacement. — Art Spiegelman

One way of understanding a graphic novel is that it's an ambitious comic and one way or another my comics have had ambitions. I have no problem with escapism. When I get my depressions all I want to do is escape reality. — Art Spiegelman

What we're losing culturally the fastest, aside from natural resources and oil and the idea of democracy and social justice, is the ability to concentrate. — Art Spiegelman

The book has very specific qualities. Let's say in 2300 they discover the physical book, after having lived with the digital book for several hundred years. They'll be able to say, "Look at all the cool stuff you can have in a real book and how different it is." The differences are manifold. — Art Spiegelman

I live in my own bubble. I was looking for an audience that wouldn't necessarily be looking for escapism when they came to my comics. — Art Spiegelman

Right now anything made for the iPad is like performance art. I'm not interested in performance art. Comics are too hard to make to be done for such a passing blip. When it stabilizes, I'll look at it. — Art Spiegelman

Some of the reviewers wanted less. Some wanted lots more. Some wanted lots more of something else. But these strips are exactly what they are. — Art Spiegelman

Even on the iPad or the Kindle, when reading a book, you're rewarded for pressing a button - it's almost as if it were a Pavlovian thing. There's a little action that happens. And that there's always a little pump of adrenaline that happens. But that pump is different when you're lifting a page as if it was a curtain in a theater to show you another thing. — Art Spiegelman

I would say that, in the future, the book will be reserved for things that function best as a book. So, if I need a textbook that's going to be out of date because of new technological inventions, you're better off having it where you can download the supplements or the update. If you're going to read a quick mystery novel to keep you amused while you're traveling, it's fine. — Art Spiegelman

Comics can be pernicious, fascist propaganda or anti-authoritarian. The ones that shaped me were particularly anti-authoritarian. — Art Spiegelman

I wanted to create comics as soon as a I learned humans were behind them, that they were not natural phenomena like trees and boulders. — Art Spiegelman

What's called art now probably has some legitimate things happening in it, but I've become more and more distrustful of a lot of it because it seems like an extension of the fashion trade and the stock market. — Art Spiegelman

When a technology is replaced by another technology, the previous technology either becomes art or it dies. — Art Spiegelman

I'm supposed to be making comics, so I had to do it the best way I knew how, which is what those guys at the beginning of the Twentieth Century were doing. — Art Spiegelman

Style is a capitalist invention. It's a trademark. It's very useful in the world of commerce to have a good trademark, but it wasn't my first concern. I got restless — Art Spiegelman

I always had more allergies toward the superhero comics than the others. I thought those were aimed more toward the people who would beat me up. — Art Spiegelman

Life Lessons by Art Spiegelman

1. Art Spiegelman's work emphasizes the importance of understanding history and the power of storytelling to convey complex ideas.
2. His work also highlights the power of visual art to communicate and engage with difficult topics such as the Holocaust.
3. Spiegelman's work serves as a reminder that art can be a powerful tool for social change and for challenging the status quo.