Charles M. Schulz
Charles Monroe Schulz was an American cartoonist, whose comic strip Peanuts proved one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and is still widely reprinted on a daily basis.
Schulz's first regular cartoons, Li'l Folks, were published from 1947 to 1950 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press; he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post; the first of 17 single-panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there. In 1948, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January, 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached the United Feature Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. The strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. He also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip called It's Only a Game (1957–1959), but he abandoned it due to the demands of the successful Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a single-panel strip ("Young Pillars") featuring teenagers to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years, almost without interruption; during the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997. At its peak, Peanuts appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. Schulz stated that his routine every morning consisted of eating a jelly donut and sitting down to write the day's strip. After coming up with an idea (which he said could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours), he began drawing it, which took about an hour for dailies and three hours for Sunday strips. He stubbornly refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that "it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him." In November 1999 Schulz suffered a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized. Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he could not read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999.
Schulz often touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible Luke 2:8-14 to explain "what Christmas is all about." In personal interviews Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side. Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church. In the 1960s, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as being consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations during his lectures about the gospel, as he explained in his bestselling paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, the first of several books he wrote on religion and Peanuts, and other popular culture items. From the late 1980s, however, Schulz described himself in interviews as a "secular humanist": “I do not go to church anymore... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in.”
“All right, so you believe in Santa Claus, and I'll believe in the 'Great Pumpkin.' The way I see it, it doesn't matter what you believe just so you're sincere! (Linus)”
“Sometimes, when you're really depressed, all you want to do is nothing. All you want to do is lean your head on your arm, and stare into space. Sometimes this can go on for hours. If you're unusually depressed, you may have to change arms.”
“Dearest darling, how I love you. Words cannot tell how much I love you. So forget it.”
“A glacier will frequently move forward one foot while retreating three feet... Which reminds me a lot of myself!”
“If it's just a matter of looking, I've looked! I've looked for happiness at home. I've looked all over this neighbourhood for happiness... Someday, I'll look all over this country for happiness... And, someday, I'll look all around the world for happiness, but I'll probably never find it... Then, after I've looked all over the world, I'll return home.""And when you return home, you'll find the very happiness that was there all along! Is that what you're trying to say?""No, but maybe I'll find that stupid little pink bracelet I lost yesterday!”
“Duck, big brother! Here comes another day!”
“The world is filled with unmarried marriage counselors.”
“Going to our school is an education in itself which is not to be confused with actually getting an education.”
“Though her husband often went on business trips, she hated to be left alone."I've solved your problem," he said. "I've bought you a St. Bernard. Its name is Great Reluctance. Now, when I go away, you shall know that I am leaving you with Great Reluctance!"She hit him with a waffle iron.”
“None of my kids can draw!”
“I don't believe in school prayer. I think it's total nonsense...who is the teacher there that is going to have them pray? And is the teacher going to be Catholic or Mormon or Episcopalian or what? It just causes all sorts of problems. And what are the kids praying about anyway? Does it really matter, does praying in school...what are you doing it for? The whole thing just opens up all sorts of elements of discussion. I think it's crazy.”
“I was jumping rope. Everything was fine. And then suddenly everything seemed so futile.”
“Life is like a game, Charlie Brown... Sometimes you win... Sometimes you lose.""I'll be happy if I just make the playoffs.”
“Do you think if two people liked the same thing, it could bring them closer together?""Certainly... Take classical music, for instance... Two people who shared a love for Beethoven could become very close...""How about TV?”
“Dear Valentine, I love you. Whoever you are.”
“Sometimes I ask myself questions... Sometimes I ask myself, is this your real life or is this just a pilot film? Is my life a thirty-nine week series or is it a special?""Whatever it is, your ratings are down... Five cents, please!”
“Bob Dylan will be thirty years old this month...""That's the most depressing thing I've ever heard.”
“I have a question. What if your advice doesn't help me? Do I get my money back?""No, because as soon as you pay me, I run right out and spend it. That's one of the first things they teach you in medical school!”
“I've tried to be a better person... I've tried, and tried and tried! You know how hard I've tried! Tell me how I've tried...""Nice try... Five cents, please!”
“Do you ever feel like running away?""Of course... Sometimes I feel like I want to run away from everything.""I remember having that feeling once when I was at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm... I climbed over the fence, but I was still in the world!”
“Ten milligrams equals one centigram. Ten decigrams equals one gram. Ten grams equals one grampa.""Keep going... I can hardly wait to see what comes next...”
“I think this is irresponsible preaching and very dangerous, and especially when it is slanted toward children, I think it's totally irresponsible, because I see nothing biblical that points up to our being in the last days, and I just think it's an outrageous thing to do, and a lot of people are making a living—they've been making a living for 2,000 years—preaching that we're in the last days.”
“I think we place the wrong emphasis upon examples, that we're treading on very weak ground when we set ourselves up as examples for others to become religious. If people are going to look at me for religious guidance, then I think they're looking in the wrong place.”
“I don't know the meaning of life. I don't know why we are here. I think life is full of anxieties and fears and tears. It has a lot of grief in it, and it can be very grim. And I do not want to be the one who tries to tell somebody else what life is all about. To me it's a complete mystery.”
“I think they assign things to students which are way over their heads, which destroy your love of reading, rather than leading you to it. I don't understand that. Gosh.”
“Cartooning is preaching. And I think we have a right to do some preaching. I hate shallow humor. I hate shallow religious humor, I hate shallow sports humor, I hate shallowness of any kind.”
“There is a thought among some brands of theology that souls are waiting up in heaven to be born. Now how in the world anybody comes up with that is beyond me, and how you can be so sure of that is also beyond me. I always like to go back to Snoopy's theological writings, which he called, "Has It Ever Occurred to You That You Might Be Wrong." And that's the way I feel. These things fascinate me, and I like to talk about them with other people, and hear what they think. But I'm always a little bit leery of people who are sure that they're right about things that nobody's ever been able to prove, and never will be able to prove.”
“I don't think God wants to be worshiped. I think the only pure worship of God is by loving one another, and I think all other forms of worship became a substitute for the love that we should show one another.”
“Oh yes, I'm at my happiest when I have a good idea and I'm drawing it well, and it comes out well and somebody laughs at it.”
“I used to have more tolerance for these views, but I am losing patience with what I see. The test of anything is the fruit it bears. I see no good fruit being born.”
“Once when Monty was in kindergarten, I had read to him and was trying to get him to go to sleep. He said he didn't want to close his eyes because "It's dark in there.”
“Well, I know about loneliness. I won't talk about it, but I was very lonely after the war. I know what it feels like to spend a whole weekend all by yourself and no one wants you at all.”
“I see no reason why church services have to be standard. I've discussed this with the man who used to be a pastor here at the Methodist Church in Sebastopol. I told him I saw no reason why, on a certain Sunday morning, if a minister has felt during the week the burden of a topic upon his heart and he knows that it is going to take more than the standard twenty minutes to discuss this thing, why he can't rise at the beginning of the service and say 'I have something of special importance this morning so let's sing just one song, and if you'll forgive me, I think I'm going to need about an hour to explain it to you.' I think the congregation would appreciate his candor and give him their attention. If, on the other hand, he does not feel that a definite message has been given him, why not admit it from the pulpit and say, 'This morning, I'm not going to try to make up something to fill the time. We'll sing a few extra hymns and go home!' Why do the services have to begin and end at the same time, and why does everything have to be so rigid?”
“I do not like a high-organized church. I think that as soon as the congregation reaches a level of one hundred or so people, it is time to build a new church. As soon as the congregation gets to the point where you are not on fairly intimate terms with every other person in that church, then you have become a theater where people can attend services. I do not think you can attend a church service. Service is not something which is there to be viewed as if it were a play or a movie.”
“Those who find no humor in faith are probably those who find the church a refuge for their own black way of looking at life, although I think many of us find the church a refuge for a lot of our personality faults. Those of us, for example, who never learned to dance feel that the church is an ideal place for us if we can find a church that doesn't believe in dancing. Then we can get away with never having learned how to dance. You can carry this in all sorts of directions and see that the church is a refuge for what is really a 'flaw' in your own makeup.”
“Happiness is a sad song.”
“Love is letting him win even though you know you could slaughter him.”
“Happiness is a piece of fudge caught on the first bounce.”
“Rats! There goes the bell... oh, how I hate lunch hours! I always have to eat alone because nobody likes me... Peanut butter again... I wish that little red haired girl would come over, and sit with me. Wouldn’t it be great if she’d walk over here, and say, “May I eat lunch with you, Charlie Brown?” I’d give anything to talk with her... she’d never like me, though... I’m so blah and so stupid... she’d never like me... I wonder what would happen if I went over and tried to talk to her! Everyone would probably laugh... she’d probably be insulted someone as blah as I am tried to talk to her. I hate lunch hour... all it does is make me lonely... during class it doesn’t matter... I can’t even eat... Nothing tastes good... Rats! Nobody is ever going to like me... Lunch hour is the loneliest hour of the day!”
“This is my report on how to live... They say the best way is just to live one day at a time... If you try to live seven days at a time, the week will be over before you know it...”
“It's better to live one day as a lion than a dozen years as a sheep.”
“All is well... That's my new philosophy...”
“If you can't beat 'em, cooperate 'em to death!”
“It's a mistake to try to avoid the unpleasant things in life... But I'm beginning to consider it...”
“There's no sense in doing a lot of barking if you don't really have anything to say.”
“I have observed that whenever you try to hit somebody, there is a tendency for them to try to hit you back.”
“Love is not knowing what you're talking about.”
“I guess babysitters are like used cars... You never really know what you're getting...”
“A watched supper dish never fills!”
“Have you ever known anyone who was happy? And was still in his right mind, I mean...”