Top 40 Harvey Pekar Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.”

— Harvey Pekar

2. “Misery loves company. There’s a lot to that.”

— Harvey Pekar

3. “It’s the stuff that happens right in front of your face when there’s no routine and everything is unexpected. That’s what I want to write about.”

— Harvey Pekar

4. “You do not pursue potential conflict unless you hold power over your foe.”

— Harvey Pekar

5. “Comics are words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.”

— Harvey Pekar

6. “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

7. “Am I a guy who writes about himself in a comic book, or am I just a character in that book? If I die, will that character keep going, or will he just fade away?”

— Harvey Pekar

8. “I’m sure someone out there has a workable solution. But what do I know? I make comic books and write about jazz. I do know the difference between right and wrong, though.”

— Harvey Pekar

9. “I’m a guy that likes to sit in one place.”

— Harvey Pekar

10. “When you’re dead, it robs life of many of it’s pleasures.”

— Harvey Pekar

11. “I think you can do anything with comics that you could do in just about any art form.”

— Harvey Pekar

12. “I don’t think I made any really big mistakes; it’s just that I chose something difficult to do. Looking back, I suppose I should be grateful that I got as far as I got.”

— Harvey Pekar

13. “I always wanted praise and I always wanted attention; I won’t lie to you. I was a jazz critic and that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, What could I do? I can’t sing, I can’t dance, I can’t act or anything like that. OK, I can write.”

— Harvey Pekar

14. “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

15. “Everybody’s like everybody else, and everybody’s different from everybody else.”

— Harvey Pekar

16. “I realize that I’m pretty flawed, but you know – I haven’t killed anybody yet.”

— Harvey Pekar

17. “What kind of a day was it? A day like all others, that alters and illuminates our times. And you were there.”

— Harvey Pekar

18. “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

19. “Nationalism and ethnic pride, in the long run, delay human development, and the misery they cause must be recognized. If enough people saw that, maybe we wouldn’t have so many wars.”

— Harvey Pekar

20. “It makes you feel good to know that there’s other people afflicted like you.”

— Harvey Pekar

21. “I met Robert Crumb in 1962; he lived in Cleveland for a while. I took a look at his stuff. Crumb was doing stuff beyond what other writers and artists were doing. It was a step beyond Mad.”

— Harvey Pekar

22. “People will believe absurd things – in the 19th century and now.”

— Harvey Pekar

23. “I thought I had a great opportunity when I started doing my comic book in 1972. I thought there was so much territory to work in.”

— Harvey Pekar

24. “Praise from people I respect can get me through times of no money better than money can get me through times of no praise.”

— Harvey Pekar

25. “It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing.”

— Harvey Pekar

26. “I’m doing research for a large comic book on the Beat Generation guys – Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and those guys.”

— Harvey Pekar

27. “I called up my grandparents who I hadn’t spoken to for over three years. I called my mother, who I had recently told to stop calling lest I contact the police. I sat with them all and it was normal and fun and good. I’m even ready – maybe – to speak to my father. Superman doesn’t get upset at the people who shoot bullets at him. I get why, now.”

— Harvey Pekar

28. “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

29. “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

30. “Life is about women, gigs, an’ bein’ creative.”

— Harvey Pekar

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

— Harvey Pekar

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

— Harvey Pekar

33. “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

34. “It didnt take long to establish myself, as far as people thinking my work was good. They liked it from the start.”

— Harvey Pekar

35. “I think the people who would be the least interested in my work would be people who read lots of comic books.”

— Harvey Pekar

36. “People who are readers of fiction aren’t particularly interested in comic books.”

— Harvey Pekar

37. “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

38. “I’ve probably had my day in the sun. I think I’ve influenced a lot of comic book writers.”

— Harvey Pekar

39. “I continue to be disappointed that people don’t try and diversify the kind of work they are doing in comics.”

— Harvey Pekar

40. “He wasn’t a man, but a tape recorder, repeating catch phrases and old slogans without any thought to the concepts behind them, a dog stuck in the training of his youth and faithfully executing his tasks long after his master had moved on.”

— Harvey Pekar

41. “It’s extremely seldom that anybody wants me to change what I’ve written about them. Generally I portray them in a good light, if they’re friends.”

— Harvey Pekar

42. “I wanted to write literature that pushed people into their lives rather than helping people escape from them.”

— Harvey Pekar

43. “Im pretty aggressive, and maybe obnoxious, about trying to get work.”

— Harvey Pekar

44. “It’s my perspective: gloom and doom.”

— Harvey Pekar

45. “I try and write the way things happen. I don’t try and fulfill people’s wishes.”

— Harvey Pekar

46. “Since about 1980 Kenny Werner has been one of jazz’s unsung heroes.”

— Harvey Pekar

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

— Harvey Pekar