Cleveland has a very bad reputation, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s left over from when there were very wealthy people – the Art Museum and a world class symphony that’s still world class. Harvey Pekar Read Quote
I always wanted praise, and I always wanted attention; I won’t lie to you. I was a jazz critic, and that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, ‘What could I do? I can’t sing, I can’t dance, I can’t act or anything like that. OK, I can write.’ Harvey Pekar Read Quote
When I was a kid, back in the ’40s, I was a voracious comic book reader. And at that time, there was a lot of patriotism in the comics. They were called things like ‘All-American Comics’ or ‘Star-Spangled Comics’ or things like that. I decided to do a logo that was a parody of those comics, with ‘American’ as the first word. Harvey Pekar Read Quote
I’m kind of concerned about ‘Ego & Hubris’ because I’m thinking that people will read it and maybe even be entertained by it, but at the end of it, you know, they’ll wonder, ‘Why did this guy write this? What was the point of it?’ Harvey Pekar Read Quote
I was 16 years old, and I was just flailing around, looking for an interest. I heard, you know, these jazz records. They were modern records, at the time in the ’50s, and I realized that I didn’t fully get what was going on. But I liked a lot of what I heard. Harvey Pekar Read Quote
People who are readers of fiction aren’t particularly interested in comic books. Harvey Pekar Read Quote
It’s extremely seldom that anybody wants me to change what I’ve written about them. Generally I portray them in a good light, if they’re friends. Harvey Pekar Read Quote
I’m just tired of people saying I’m a self-hating Jew because I’m critical of Israel or make fun of old Jewish ladies. I do not hate myself. And Jews who criticize Israel aren’t necessarily mentally ill. Harvey Pekar Read Quote
Even a pretty traditional comic book writer can make valuable contributions to the Internet. Harvey Pekar Read Quote
