Michael Leunig
Michael Leunig
Michael Leunig, typically referred to as Leunig, is an Australian cartoonist, poet and cultural commentator. His best known works include The Adventures of Vasco Pyjama and the Curly Flats series. He was declared an Australian Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia in 1999...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionCartoonist
Date of Birth2 June 1945
CountryAustralia
function melancholy
I think melancholy is part of the natural condition, you know. Anyway, I think it's the artist's function to have their melancholy and not hide it, you see.
inner
Stay out of the loop, the club, the inner circle.
excellence stay
Stay away from excellence at all costs; it stinks.
ability delusional distract great life ourselves speed technology totally velocity whether
I think we live in delusional times, whether it's with a great ability to totally distract ourselves with technology, or with speed and the velocity of life.
claiming difficult fear free history imagine lived people time
It is difficult to imagine any time in history when so many people claiming to be so free have lived in so much fear of being unattractive.
home quite radical rejecting schooling
It is home schooling that is rejecting a narrowness. It is not a radical value system; it's actually quite conservative.
cruel days earn fascists found good hard leftists morning normal proper seeing social welfare
Like normal people, leftists now have to get up in the morning and earn a living, seeing as the fascists have come down so hard on social welfare fraud, and this is the cruel reality. The good old days are gone, and increasingly, leftists are to be found working in ordinary, proper jobs.
energy good hurting imagine life sadly seems spend time
Life seems sadly mishandled by humans, as if it's all too much for them - they spend so much time and energy hurting each other, making things worse, and fouling their own nest, all because they imagine things aren't good enough and should be made much better.
time
I see a lot of my children. They're around the house all the time on the farm, you know.
courts landed marks paper recall sorts
Over the years, my marks on paper have landed me in all sorts of courts and controversies - I have been comprehensively labelled; anti-this and anti-that, anti-social, anti-football, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-science, anti-republican, anti-American, anti-Australian - to recall just an armful of the antis.
cast change economic lose onto resources suddenly talents wits
Out of economic hardship can come change - we are suddenly cast onto our wits and our talents and our resources and our strengths, as we lose all the choices we once had.
bit black carbon dip draw fact lovely mud people steel stick thanks
I give thanks for the fact that I can get this stick with a bit of steel nib on the end, dip it in some black carbon stuff, and draw on paper. Now, people did it the same way 2,000 years ago. And there's something lovely about that play, and making mud pies and a mess. That's a lovely privilege.
life
Have I got the right to experiment with my child's life?
bad drag grow life lose mental might starting time wants
We may lose our memory as we get older, but this might not be such a bad thing - who wants to drag a mental junkyard around at a time of life when you're starting to grow interesting little wings?