Top 25 Mort Walker Quotes

Humor strips dominated what were called the funny papers early in the century, but by the 1920s and ’30s, adventure strips had taken over. With ‘Beetle Bailey,’ I revived the funny part of the funny papers, and I’d be proud to be remembered for that.

Laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of your heart.

Old cartoonists never retire, they just erase away.

People take a liking to me like I’m a long-lost friend.

If I’m going on vacation, I just work ahead.

At one time Tribune Syndicate emptied out their storeroom. They put tables full of original cartoons down in the lobby and said take one if you want one. The comics were simply a burden to them.

I don’t know how I’d be retired. I wake up every day with another idea.

Beetle Bailey is actually me, in uniform. I’ve got about 20 characters, and they’re all after friends of mine.

When the war was over and the guys were back to shaving every day, the editor thought the Beetle Bailey strips were hurting their disciplinary efforts to get the guys back to routine.

None of the established museums were treating cartoons seriously. It was considered a lesser art or no art at all, just a way to sell newspapers. Even the syndicates who were dedicated to the cartoons were throwing them out, figuring they had no value after they were printed.

You learn just by trying and experimenting. By the time I was 14, I had my own comic strip in the Kansas City paper.

You can go through comic strips alone and study the common man. You can trace our history.

I think it’s legitimate to do satire. If you’re going to write a book of satire on Marilyn Monroe or Madonna, you’re not going to get their permission, because you’re going to make fun of them!

When I write ‘Beetle Bailey,’ I can always do jokes about him being lazy, and everyone gets it.

The frustration of being ordered around by somebody to do something – everyone can relate to that. I think Beetle represents that – the common man caught in that morass of rules and regulations. I don’t even think of it as an army strip… it’s a world anyone can understand.

I say, if you believe what you read in the comic strips, then you believe that mice run around with little gold buttons on their red pants and drive cars.

The people who were against the Vietnam War thought I was attacking the Army. The guys in the Army thought I was representing their experiences. I was on both sides, and I survived.

About the only way you can find out about the common man, his slang, what he looked like, what he thought, is through the comic strips. It’s a powerful way for young people to learn history.

I took Beetle home thinking that after the Korean War was over, I would have to take him out of the Army. I thought, well, what am I going to do with him?

Seven days without laughter makes one weak.

When I first started, you couldn’t mention divorce or death. You couldn’t show smelly socks. You couldn’t show a snake. They took a skunk out of my strip one time.

I like a happy ending. That’s what I do all the time. I like to make people feel happy.

I’ve always said that what cartoonists do is create friends for readers.

Professionals don’t get writer‘s block. I can always come up with the punch line.

Comics have always helped people to read. A lot of people learned to read by reading the comics. And it’s our livelihood, after all. If people don’t know how to read, they’re not reading our comics.