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see also Peanuts.

Charles Monroe Schulz (26 November 1922 - 12 February 2000) American cartoonist and satirist; creator of the Peanuts comic strip.

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• It seems beyond the comprehension of people that someone can be born to draw comic strips, but I think I was. My ambition from earliest memory was to produce a daily comic strip.
  • As quoted in a brief biography at HarperCollins

• I just draw what I think is funny, and I hope other people think it is funny, too.
  • Address to the Sonoma County Press Club as quoted in the Sonoma County Press Democrat (13 February 2000)

• The only thing I really ever wanted to be was a cartoonist. That's my life. Drawing.
  • As quoted in the Sonoma County Press Democrat (13 February 2000)

Peanuts comic strip

see Peanuts.

National Cartoonist Society lecture (1994)

Online text at PlanetCartooonist

• I never use the name Peanuts, because I hate it.
  • On his dislike of the name Peanuts given to his comic strip by the United Features Syndicate; Li'l Folks was the title under which his earliest work on it had been done.

• I can honestly say that I still get just the same thrill at the end of the week when I have drawn that thing from Monday through Saturday, and I feel that I've thought of some pretty good ideas, and they've been drawn the best that I can draw them, and it's a nice feeling to know that they're going to be mailed out and that I have done it again.

• I can absolutely guarantee you that despite what some columnist for the Chicago Tribune wrote a few years ago, that it's time for me to retire, that the strip is no good any more, that the strip has lost all its meaning and everything, I work harder now — I truly do — I am more particular about everything I draw then I ever have been, I almost never send in anything that I'm not totally pleased about. And I still am searching for that wonderful penline that comes down when you are drawing Linus standing there, and you start with the pen up near the back of his neck and you bring it down and bring it out, and the pen point fans a little bit, and you come down here and draw the lines this way for the marks on his sweater, and all of that . . . This is what it's all about — to get feelings of depth and roundness, and the pen line is best pen line you can make. That's what it's all about.

• If there's somebody who is trying to be a cartoonist, or thinks he is a cartoonist, and has not discovered the joy of making these perfect pen lines, I think he is robbing himself or herself of what it is all about. Because this is what it is! The times you make these wonderful pen lines, and make them come alive. I tell people when they ask me that the most important thing about a comic strip is that it must be fun to look at. If you are drawing something day after day after day, no matter how funny the dialogue might be, it still must be fun to look at.

• I used to see the phrase, "This crazy business about slinging ink." This is not a crazy business about slinging ink. This is a deadly serious business.

• Don't let them kid you that this is a business that has so much stress that you have to have time off. I was talking to a friend the other day, and I said, "You know, cartoonists have nothing to complain about. This is what we've wanted to do all of our lives, and we finally have a chance to do it, we can live anyplace we want to, we can work any hours we want to, and they send us money."

• I never give my work to somebody else and say, "What do you think about that?" I just don't trust anybody. If I think it's funny, or if I think it's silly, I send it in anyway because I'm just trying to please myself. I never try to please a certain audience. I think that's disastrous. There's no way in the world you can anticipate what your reader is going to like or dislike.

• I've learned a few things down through the years. One of the things that annoy me is cartoonists who draw characters who overreact to a punchline. I'm a great believer in the mild in cartooning. I'm a great believer in mild caricatures, and if you look back at all the superstars down through the years, none of them used what we could call extreme caricature.

• Show them where the mouth is; show them where the eyes are and the nose is. But, if the cartoon character says something, don't have the character emote with a great, big expression over some very mild statement.

• Somebody mentioned the other day that on a Sunday page, it's not a bad idea to draw the next-to-the-last panel first. It's terrible when you draw a whole Sunday page and find out it's not going to work. I read that Ernie Bushmiller used to do that. It's something that I discovered on my own.

• The first thing I do when I draw a Sunday page is I take out a Peanuts calendar and I find out when the page is going to appear. Once last year, lo and behold, I looked at it and it says June 6. I had forgotten all about D-Day the previous year. So it was a total accident that I happened to discover that that Sunday was going to come out on June 6. So I drew one huge panel, which I never used to do. Snoopy is landing at Omaha Beach, and he's lying in the water, just his head and the helmet amid all the things Rommel had put down there to keep the soldiers from landing, and down below I just wrote, "June 6, 1944 — To Remember." And I got such a wonderful response from men all over the world. . . . Now, I realize that this year is the fiftieth anniversary. I beat myself by one year! Now, I can't let these men down. I've been thinking for a whole year about what I'm going to do for D-day, the actual landing.

• Erwin Rommel's wife had her birthday on June 6! Now Rommel knew this, of course, and several weeks before, he had planned to go ahead and go home for her birthday. He had already bought her a pair of blue suede shoes in Paris, and he figured the Allies were not quite ready to land, according to their studies. He felt there was time go home. So he went home for her birthday, and they landed while he was gone! It was a tremendous stroke of luck for the invaders. Now, that's a pretty good idea, but how do we make it work?... I kept thinking about this week after week, until one day all of a sudden it hit me — why not have Linus give a report, so we start off with Linus standing in school, saying, "This is a report on D-day," and he talks about the invading forces being prepared to move, but nobody knows when, except one unknown GI.... So I think about it, and finally I get the idea that Linus says, "When he ran off to call General Eisenhower, he spoke in code." The last panel shows one of those old English phone booths, all painted red, and I couldn't find out what the telephone looked like inside the phone booth, so I just drew the phone booth, kind of blacked in the windows; and we see the last panel, just a phone booth, and the word balloon that says, "Woof!"

• I think comic strips should live a life of their own. Don't get involved too much with television. You have to show characters watching it, because it's part of our lives. But whatever you do, don't use expressions that have become famous on television. You are out there to create your own language and your own expressions. You are creating in a medium just as good as anything they do on television. We can do things that live actors can never do. A live actor could never pull a football away and show Charlie Brown up in the air and landing flat on his back. These are things they could never do.

• We have to stay within our medium, so I say don't rely too much on watching television, and trying to make comments on things you see on the screen there. There are wonderful things in Bartlett's Quotations, little bits of poetry and such. I always liked the one from either Tolstoy or Scott Fitzgerald — I don't know who it was — "In the real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning." That's a real cartoon idea for your characters. Which again brings us back to the point you have to have characters that can do lines like this. If they are overly caricatured, they cannot talk like this.
  • Schulz is quoting from Fitzgeralds's The Crack-Up (1936) : "In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

• I don't know how many ideas I've done with poor Charlie Brown lying in bed. "Sometimes I lie awake at night in bed and I ask, Is it all worth it?' " And then a voice says, "Who are you talking to?" And another voice says, "You mean: to whom are you talking?" And Charlie Brown says, "No wonder I lie awake at night."
  "Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, Why am I here?' " and a voice says, "Where are you?" "Here," Charlie Brown says. "Where's here?" says the voice. "Wave your hand so I can see you." Charlie Brown says, "The nights are getting longer."
  "Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, Why me?" And the voice says, "Nothing personal your name just happened to come up."

Attributed

• If I were to be given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.

• There's a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker.

• The meaning of life is to go back to sleep and hope that tomorrow will be a better day.

• Happiness is a warm puppy.

• Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.

Quotes of others about Schulz

• When we are exposed to something every day we can eventually lose sight of its brilliance. Newspaper readers have been exposed to Charles Schulz's comic strip 'Peanuts' for over half a century. ... Is there any philosophical insight that can be gleamed from such a mainstream and common source?
  There has been much discussion concerning Peanuts as a voice of conservative Christianity, including several books such as the 1965 work The Gospel According to Peanuts. This is not without reason; even a cursory glance at a Peanuts anthology will reveal enough scripture references to fuel a month's worth of Sunday school classes. However, to suggest that Schulz's philosophical insights didn't make it past the church door would be a mistake. While Schulz had a great interest in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ, he was also highly suspicious of dogmatic pious beliefs. In a 1981 interview, he refused to describe himself as religious, arguing that "I don't know what religious means". Charlie Brown was no comic strip missionary, blandly spreading the word of organized religion. Upon reflection, the trials and tribulations of the little round-headed kid provide deep and moving illustrations of existentialism... Why does Charlie Brown continue to go out to the pitcher's mound, despite his 50 year losing streak? Why try to kick the football, when Lucy has always pulled it away at the last second? Because there is an infinite gap between the past and the present. Regardless of what has come before, there is always the possibility of change. Monstrous freedom is a double edged sword. We exist, and are responsible. This is both liberating and terrifying. ~ Nathan Radke in "Sartre & Peanuts" ~ Philosophy Now Issue 44 (January/February 2004)

• Schulz should be considered part of the generation of authors who saw active duty during World War II; he is in the company of writers such as Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, and of course Sartre himself. It is foolish to disregard literature simply because it appears in the funnies section of the daily paper. Schulz's simple line drawings and blocky letters contain as much information about the human condition as entire shelves full of dry books.
  While it is difficult to say what Sartre would have thought of Peanuts, we do know what Schulz thought of Sartre: "I read about him in the New York Times, where he said it was very difficult to be a human being, and the only way to fight against it is to lead an active life — that's very true." If any character has shown us the difficulties in existence, it is Charlie Brown. ~ Nathan Radke in "Sartre & Peanuts" ~ Philosophy Now Issue 44 (January/February 2004)

• I had expected to meet Charles Schulz for about 15 minutes; I had expected that we would have a couple of grip-and-grin photos taken, and then we would be shuffled out the door. Instead, he spent the whole day with us. During the course of that day I began to get to know Sparky, and what impressed me about him was, after all of his accomplishments, he is still a cartoonist who is doing his daily cartoon. He goes into work every day like us beginners, and what really impressed me about him was the passion and dedication he has for his work, and the enthusiasm he has for his work. This is something some of us, I think, lose at times. We all want to become rich and successful, and sometimes we lose sight of the fact that what it is all really about is cartoon art. ~ Bruce Beattie, National Cartoonist Society President (1994)

• He would love to say he was Snoopy but he's not often a Snoopy personality. He's got the crabbiness of Lucy; he feels as lonely and out of place as Charlie Brown. He's all of those characters. ~ Paola Muggia Stuff, Director of San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum

External links

• The final Peanuts Comic strips
• Cartoon tributes to Charles M. Schulz
• Obituary at CNN
• Brief tribute at h2g2 (BBC)
• Brief biography at HarperCollins
• "Sartre & Peanuts" by Nathan Radke at Philosophy Now Issue 44 (January/February 2004)
• Songs about Snoopy
• Snoopy Space artifacts
• The Silver Snoopy Award

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