I will go to my grave in a state of abject endless fascination that we all have the capacity to become emotionally involved with a personality that doesn’t exist. – Berkeley Breathed
If I could have drawn a cat yelling for lasagna every day for 15 years and have them pay me $30 million to do so, I would have. – Berkeley Breathed
Bloom County was set in a tidy, rural environment probably because of Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ – Berkeley Breathed
Such is the nature of comic strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste. Typically, the end result is lazy, rich cartoonists. – Berkeley Breathed
I happen to think nearly everybody – especially those one might find in the odd issue of ‘People’ magazine, including me – is frightfully boring, Especially me. And Tom Cruise. Tom and I are alike in only this way. – Berkeley Breathed
Keep in mind that in 1985, I had a potential readership of over 50 million Americans. At that time, a good portion of those were under 30. – Berkeley Breathed
I drew the last image ever of Opus at midnight while Puccini was playing and I got rather stupid. Thirty years. A bit like saying goodbye to a child – which is ironic because I was never, never sentimental about him as many of his fans were. – Berkeley Breathed
I paint digitally now. A pity, in some ways, as the biggest price one pays is that you no longer have a finished piece of physical art to hang on a wall. I miss that terribly. – Berkeley Breathed
Despite what they tell you, there are simply no moral absolutes in a complex world. – Berkeley Breathed
I ignore Hallmark Holidays. And this comes from a guy who has sold a million Opus greeting cards. – Berkeley Breathed
Cartooning is about deconstruction: you gotta tear something down to make a joke. – Berkeley Breathed
My post-child period resulted in one instant change: I write shorter books for kids. – Berkeley Breathed
I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I’d bet I wouldn’t lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste. – Berkeley Breathed
I knew ‘Mars Needs Moms! ‘ would be a movie seconds after the title came to mind. Similarly, I also knew that my daughter would be calling me a dork as a default term of endearment eventually. – Berkeley Breathed
I grew up in Los Angeles and always wished I’d spent a childhood in a far different place. – Berkeley Breathed
That’s the conundrum of cartoon stripping, as opposed to political cartoons. When your anger is the driving force of your drawing hand, failure follows. The anger is OK, but it has to serve the interests of the heart, frankly. – Berkeley Breathed
I can say that even in the midst of my most cynical comic stripping: Opus shone through with a bit of heart, anchoring the ugly proceedings with a comforting pull of emotion. – Berkeley Breathed
And that’s why any of my picture books exist: They all seem to be built backwards from a simple, emotionally optimistic story beat. – Berkeley Breathed
Doonesbury had the requisite and overwhelming influence in 1980, as it did on any college cartoonist who was paying attention, of course. – Berkeley Breathed
Negative humor is forgotten immediately. It’s the stuff that makes us feel better about our lives that lives long. Much more satisfying. Enter children’s books. – Berkeley Breathed
I’ll confess right here that I secretly wish I’d have drawn a strip about a little boy with a fake tiger, going for adventures throughout the universe in spaceships of his imagination. – Berkeley Breathed
