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

Categorized in : Thinking Art Validation

Comics are a gateway drug to literacy.

Art Spiegelman

literacy drug reading

To die, it's easy. But you have to struggle for life.

Art Spiegelman

dies struggle easy

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

Art Spiegelman

dies technology art

No matter what I accomplish, it doesn't seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz.

Art Spiegelman

auschwitz accomplish matter

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

guilt parent wish

I became a degenerate artist. My parents were shaped by their own experiences, and artists weren't so useful in the death camps.

Art Spiegelman

degenerates parent artist

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

childhood profound reality

I think as soon as I figured out - and this must have been incredibly young - that comic books were made by humans, rather than being natural phenomenon likes trees or rocks, I just wanted to be one of the people who did that. So I was copying all kinds of cartoons that I was reading, comic books, and eventually learned how to draw cartoon books step-by-step and just, I don't know, I'm not an especially quick learner, but I sure was a dedicated one.

Art Spiegelman

reading book thinking

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.

Art Spiegelman

salt trust enough

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

trade fashion art

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

updates mystery-novels book

A manifesto, a diary, a crumpled suicide note, and a still relevant love letter.

Art Spiegelman

suicide diaries letters

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

Art Spiegelman

pernicious fascists propaganda

he technology that threatens to kill off books as we know them - the "physical book," a new phrase in our language - is also making the physical book capable of being more beautiful than books have been since the middle ages.

Art Spiegelman

technology beautiful book

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

allergies superhero people

Samuel Beckett once said, "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness." ...On the other hand, he SAID it.

Art Spiegelman

unnecessary silence hands

Well, I am not 100 percent sure of the definition of polemic, but it wasn't meant to convince anybody of anything.

Art Spiegelman

polemics wells definitions

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

rewards real book

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.

Art Spiegelman

real believe book

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

ipads reading book