Quotes by Ben Katchor

About Ben Katchor:

Ben Katchor is an American cartoonist best known for his comic strip Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer. He has contributed comics and drawings to The Jewish Daily Forward, The New Yorker, Metropolis magazine, and weekly newspapers in the U.S. A Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, Katchor was described by author Michael Chabon as "the creator of the last great American comic strip."
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Sometimes I make things that people have very strong responses to. Whether that's art, I don't know. That's one of those words that doesn't mean anything. It's why I don't just use words.

Ben Katchor

What sort of attractions do you think lured our coreligionists out of the ghetto and into the mainstream of European culture? Was it the wit of Molière, or the ingenious stage mechanisms of Pixérécourt? Or was it simply the opportunity to cast an ...

Ben Katchor

In America, there's a very long tradition of a comic strip that comes in newspapers, which is not true all over the world. To sell papers, they put color comics in.

Ben Katchor

As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn't know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics.

Ben Katchor

I always lived in old buildings, and I thought about who lived here before. You'd have to be oblivious not to.

Ben Katchor

A picture story just doesn't run like a film. It doesn't have 24 frames per second. It doesn't deal with this illusion of movement.

Ben Katchor

I never wore a watch. I always depend on public clocks, and stores have clocks, but that is strange.

Ben Katchor

You can have your own watch and always doubt it. If I had a watch I'd probably always be doubting it or the batteries would be dying. I just know that people always have trouble with their watches, and that's why I like public clocks.

Ben Katchor

There's something exciting about weekly strips in that you're following the way the story reveals itself to the writer week by week. All the possible directions it could have taken are there; it's a kind of participatory reading that I think books di...

Ben Katchor

I remember as a child going to an exhibit about the Soviet Union, and every paper had this alien smell. The paper and the ink were all exported. It was like a piece of cheese from that country, you could touch it, feel it, smell it, and it was differ...

Ben Katchor

The publishing industry has always wanted to make books as cheaply and as ephemerally as they could; it's nothing new.

Ben Katchor

I live in an apartment building built in 1925, and it hasn't been heavily renovated, so I feel very much connected to that time and what went on in that place.

Ben Katchor

I'm very interested in music and where these sounds of Western music come from.

Ben Katchor

Author Bio

  • NameBen Katchor
  • DescriptionWriter
  • BornNovember 19, 1951
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionComics Artist; Librettist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; MacArthur Fellows Program