Phil Witte > Phil's Quotes

“The creative process doesn't begin with humor. It begins with subject matter.”
― Dave Coverly in Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte & Rex Hesner

“I dream [a cartoon] into being by imagining how I want it to be. I lead with my imagination and, inevitably, the brush follows.”
― Kaamran Hafeez in Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte & Rex Hesner

“It is nice to get your cartoons accepted, but if you can get past that and just draw for yourself and just try not to give a s***, which I know sounds arrogant, but that's how you have to be.”
― Harry Bliss in Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte & Rex Hesner

“[Sam Gross] had some very interesting words of wisdom, one of which was 'Just remember, any minute it can all turn to s***.' That is sort of my general mindset, that all sorts of different anvils can fall out of the sky at any time.”
― Roz Chast in Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte & Rex Hesner

“I saw that my drawings had to be of a simplicity that would match the idiocy I was seeking.”
― Jack Ziegler in Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte & Rex Hesner

“One of the greatest, most wonderful things about cartooning is that it's so much up to the person doing it and how they want to do it. There's no one way.”
― Roz Chast in Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte & Rex Hesner

“Cartooning for me is my art. I take it very seriously. It's highbrow, it's Daumier.”
― Harry Bliss in Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte & Rex Hesner

“[My compulsion to create] is like a mental illness that I work out in cartoons.”
― Peter Vey in Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte & Rex Hesner

“Just as music courses enhance our appreciation by dissecting melody, rhythm, and harmony, Funny Stuff accomplishes a similar feat for gag cartoons.”
― Bob Mankoff in Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte & Rex Hesner

“I feel that the cartoon should involve something happening that could not possibly happen, but which has a kind of truth to it. There should be a give-and-take between the truth and the implausibility. If those two things are going on at the exact same time, and they’re both equal in weight, then the brain has a conflict that it has to resolve, and it can only resolve it through laughter.”
― Joe Dator in Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons by Phil Witte & Rex Hesner