Top 25 Garry Trudeau Quotes

The strips about the military do seem to provoke moving and thoughtful responses. It’s nice when the strip resonates, but more importantly, I need to know when I’m getting something wrong. The last thing I want to do is contribute to the suffering that wounded warriors already endure.

For the most part, editors no longer view ‘Doonesbury’ as a rolling provocation, which is fine by me. It makes no sense to intentionally antagonize the very people on whose support you most depend.

Any time you bring sexuality into the comics pages, you have to brace for pushback.

I’m still passionately interested in what my fellow humans are up to. For me, a day spent monitoring the passing parade is a day well-spent.

There’s always been some concern that adult subject matter should be quarantined from a page that attracts children. Unlike late at night, when ‘South Park’ and ‘Colbert’ are on, impressionable minds are wide awake when the newspaper arrives.

I try not to second-guess editors; they’re the clients, and I have no expectation that my strip is going to make it into every paper every day.

There is nothing worse than annotated humour.

The systematic dismantling of reproductive rights, much like the takedown of collective bargaining, has been taking place in full view.

I’ve been trying for some time to develop a lifestyle that doesn’t require my presence.

I just happen to have one of those skill sets that allows me to work in my underwear.

I try to take people one at a time, with all the contradictions and compromises that most of us live with.

I’m a pointillist, just working my tiny little piece of the canvas. I’m not so good at perspective.

In any event, it’s not exactly a secret to regular readers what my views on the war are.

Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.

I’m never happier than when I’m not working. The strip is a job – that’s why I take money for it. It’s a job I’m passionate about, but it’s a job I totally leave in the studio when I walk out of here, unless I’m late and I have to work at home. I never think of the strip unless I’m compelled to.

Comic strips are like a public utility. They’re supposed to be there 365 days a year, and you’re supposed to be able to hit the mark day after day.

Life is like a movie-since there aren’t any commercial breaks, you have to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of it.

I don’t want to sound disingenuous here – controversy is obviously good for business, especially if your business is satire. And it does amplify the discussion – in my view, a good thing.

I’ve been getting pulled from newspapers for my entire career.

Lives have been altered in fundamental ways, and later, after they acquire a more complete understanding of what goals are actually attainable, many are left facing a lot of pain and frustration. And yet, there’s no culture of complaint.

That’s what fiction writers do: create characters and do terrible things to them for the entertainment of others. If they feel guilty enough, they write happy endings.

Becoming the new feminine ideal requires just the right combination of insecurity, exercise, bulimia and surgery.

I don’t think so, but it’s always in the back of my mind that many of the soldiers being wounded and killed in Iraq are about the same age as my kids. My godson is going over soon, so the war’s about to get personal for me.

I can only try to keep the characters interesting; it’s up to the readers to decide whether they’re still relevant.

Medical decisions have been politicized. What doctor wants a state legislator in his consulting room?