Bill Watterson
Bill Watterson
William Boyd "Bill" Watterson IIis an American cartoonist and the author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, which was syndicated from 1985 to 1995. Watterson stopped drawing Calvin and Hobbes at the end of 1995 with a short statement to newspaper editors and his readers that he felt he had achieved all he could in the medium. Watterson is known for his negative views on licensing and comic syndication and his move back into private life after he stopped...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCartoonist
Date of Birth5 July 1958
CountryUnited States of America
Calvin: Dear Santa, before I submit life to your scrutiny, I demand to know who made YOU the matter of my fate?! Who are YOU to question my behavior, HUH??? What gives you the right?! Hobbes: Santa makes the toys, so he gets to decide who to give them to. Calvin: Oh.
When life gives you lemons, chunk it right back.
CALVIN: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us? HOBBES: I suppose if we couldn't laugh at the things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.
I was not prepared for the resulting attention. Besides disliking the diminishment of privacy and the inhibiting quality of feeling watched, I valued my anonymous, boring life. In fact, I didn't see how I could write honestly without it. A year later, I moved out west, got an unlisted phone number, stopped giving interviews, and tried to fly as low under the radar as possible. Of course, some reporters took this as a personal challenge to intrude, but in general, my quiet life let me concentrate on my work.
Whenever I hear about people trying to rediscover the ""child within,"" I want to scream.
Why should I have to WORK for everything?! It's like saying I don't deserve it!
Why isn't my life like a situation comedy? Why don't I have a bunch of friends with nothing better to do but drop by and instigate wacky adventures? Why aren't my conversations peppered with spontaneous witticisms? Why don't my friends demonstrate heartfelt concern for my well being when I have problems? ...I gotta get my life some writers.
You can lead people to the truth, but you can't make them understand it.
(W)hen I stopped understanding math and science, my choice was made.
We've had a few, but considering the length of the delay, it has not been bad.
We all want to go to heaven, but nobody wants to do what it takes to get there.
Who was the guy who first looked at a cow and said, "I think I'll drink whatever comes out of these things when I squeeze 'em!"?
I didn't want 'Calvin and Hobbes' to coast into halfhearted repetition, as so many long-running strips do. I was ready to pursue different artistic challenges, work at a less frantic pace ... and start restoring some balance to my life.
I'd like to have the opportunity to draw this strip for years and see where it goes. It's sort of a scary thing now to imagine; these cartoonists who've been drawing a strip for twenty years. I can't imagine coming up with that much material. If I just take it day by day, though, it's a lot of fun, and I do think I have a long way to go before I've exhausted the possibilities.