"I realized I was a geek and I wasn't going to make it with the girls, I felt so painfully isolated that I vowed I would get revenge on the world by becoming a famous cartoonist."

"My art is very influenced by the early comics of my childhood. In the '60s I took psychedelic drugs--all kinds, and as result my drawing became very chaotic. So starting in the late '70s I became interested in improving my draftsmanship and have been improving it ever since. I study the work of older artists that I greatly admire. As far as working goes I work late at night and into the wee hours of the morning when it is quiet around here. I always work at the same desk and light table in my studio. I have no special fancy equipment. When I have a deadline I work until I finish the work, and I can get into long periods of daily work. Sometimes I stop through life's distractions and I go weeks without working and get depressed. As I've become more successful and well-known it's become more difficult to get time alone."

"I think I was very lucky to have started out in my career in the '60s as it was a period that was open to everything. It was easier for young artists to get published then."

"I'm a total child of popular culture. That's all I ever saw until I was 20 years old. TV. Comicbooks. That's it. In my family we had a TV when I was 5 years old in 1948. We started watching it a lot. We watched Howdy Doody and the Lone Ranger. That was the stuff that was deeply imprinted on me. Little Lulu and Donald Duck and Felix the Cat — real basic popular culture that was fed to kids. My parents had no culture. Not what's considered a culture with a capital K."

"The thing about comics is that comics are part of a definite, specific lineage and no cartoonist has considered himself a complete, groundbreaking innovator. You're proud of the fact that you picked up from this guy and that guy before."

"When I was younger I just lived my life on paper. I didn't really live in the real world very much. As a consequence I couldn't cope with the real world and real people very well. That in itself became life threatening so I had to stop drawing so much and learn how to cope with people. Otherwise it would have killed me."

"I really didn’t consider myself a Sixties typical guy at all, you know? In the late Sixties, you know, I felt kind of like outside of all of that nonsense. And to be identified with it later is kind of ironic. But yeah, in a way, I was a typical Sixties guy. I took LSD, I said, “Oh, wow, oh, groovy, man.” You know, I said all that stuff."

"The great thing about comic strips was that it was always a real low medium, and you weren’t hindered by any need to be deep, or respectable. You just draw any stupid thing you wanted. You know? It didn’t have to be intellectual, or deep, or complex. And say hey, it’s a comic book, I can do anything I want. So, you just do any silly, stupid thing you want."

"I’ve kind of become a celebrity lately, in the last couple of years, since the Crumb documentary came out, and everything. And the thing is celebrity is really weird, and it’s a nightmare in a lot of ways. I was in London. I had to do this public appearance thing. And these paparazzis were out there taking, snapping pictures of me and Aline, it was so horrible, I was so angry. And I just wanted to smash their cameras in their faces. And later that night I was just thinking, I’m just gonna quit drawing. Fuck this whole thing. It’s just not worth it. That shit. That shit was horrible. Yeah, I’ve had that feeling many times."

"I'm not a star! I'm just half a star!"

"I was quite miserable for a good chunk of my youth. I was chronically depressed between the ages of 17 and 25. Suicidal depressed. Over decades it gradually ... gradually ... diminished. I'm less depressed right now. That's not to say I'm happy. I used to feel a profound alienation from the world. You can't even imagine. I felt like an invisible ghost moving but not able to affect anything around me. But I did get a lot of artwork done. I lived those years on paper."

“My pissant little fame made my life so completely crazy. Most of my energy was now focused on dealing with the endless procession of hustlers and hangers-on, and getting rid of all this pent-up sex rage. The comics definitely suffered”

"As I get older, my life accumulates more and more complicated baggage, which I have to slough off in order to be able to sit down to draw. When I was young, drawing was a defense, you know. It got me through life. I needed to draw when life was too scary; I couldn't handle it, so I would retreat into drawing."

"People from the on high fine-art museum world, just don’t know what to compare it to. They just didn’t even look, and could not possibly consider that as something you would take seriously enough to discuss in the same way you would discuss all the 'isms' of modern art, you know."

"I have very ambivalent, emotional, neurotic feelings about women. It's a big mix-up inside of me: adoration mixed with fear, hostility, anger, wanting. I want to please them, but then I also want to, like, do bizarre, perverted things to them, especially the ones I'm attracted to. And I'm kind of resentful because I see the kinds of men most women are attracted to, and it certainly doesn't include the kind of guy I am. And there's a certain bitterness from when I was young, when girls ignored me when I told them I drew comics; I might as well have told them that I was a rubber-good salesman."

"When you start telling people the hellish aspects of being famous or being wanted by the media, it's really hard to get them to sympathize because 90 percent of them would love to be in that position. They really think it's heaven to be famous. What can I say, it has definite advantages. Never a dull moment. I wish there was a dull moment. The problem with being a famous cartoon artist is that you get pestered to death by pimply-faced 19-year-old guys...It's really rare when a woman is interested in you because you're a comic artist. There's no romantic aura around it at all."

"I spend more time on business than I do on drawing, as the Crumb empire expands beyond my control."

"My personal obsession for big women interferes with some people's enjoyment of my work. I knew it was weird and disturbing and even offensive to a lot of people, particularly women. But I couldn't keep it out of the comics. I would always try to give it some sort of metaphorical sense because I derived such pleasure out of drawing these women in bizarre situations with these little guys doing stuff to them."

"I've been trying to resolve the sex obsession with the art thing for my whole life. When I saw the work of S. Clay Wilson in the summer of '68, it was a revelation to me. Wilson drew any crazy idea that came into his head, no matter how twisted or violent or sexually weird or whatever. He just drew it. I thought 'Yeah, why stop yourself?' Just put it all out there and see what happens."

"The only burning passion I'm sure I have is the passion for sex."