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.”
“Don't be a leaf... Be a tree!”
“Soon Hansel and Gretel came to a little cottage. When they got quite near, they saw that the little house was made of bread and roofed with cake. The windows were transparent sugar.""There must not have been a very strict building code...”
“It's the big kids who get everything! They push you out of line at the show... They grab all the cake and ice cream at parties...""I guess that's just the way life is...""In the animal kingdom, we call it, 'survival of the fattest'!”
“The crabby little girls of today are the crabby old women of tomorrow!”
“What's the sense in having an eclipse if you can't look at it? Somebody in production sure slipped up this time!”
“I proved to you that psychiatry is an exact science!""An exact science?!""Yes, you owe me exactly one hundred and forty-three dollars!”
“Lucy was using my blanket to dry the dishes... We now have very secure dishes!”
“What if everyone in the whole world suddenly decided to run away from his problems?""Well, at least we'd all be running in the same direction!”
“Can't you see me as king of the Hereford ranchers, Lucy?""Oh, I can see you, all right... I can see you riding out on your beautiful palomino checking the herd... There you sit, silhouetted against the evening sky... Sucking your thumb and holding that stupid blanket!”
“Dear Great Pumpkin, Halloween is now only a few days away. Children all over the world await you coming. When you rise out of the pumpkin patch that night, please remember I am your most loyal follower. Have a nice trip. Don't forget to take out flight insurance.”
“You mean you're going to send the same form letter to the Great Pumpkin, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny?""Why not? These guys get so much mail they can't possibly tell the difference... I bet they don't even read the letters themselves! How could they?! The trouble with you, Charlie Brown, is you don't understand how these big organizations work!”
“The worst part of it is you don't know if he's barking at an owl, the moon or a burglar!""That's one of the drawbacks of a limited vocabulary!”
“For one brief moment victory was within our grasp!""And then the game started!”
“Sucking your thumb without a blanket is like eating a cone without ice cream!”
“Don't sit there watching TV without your glasses! Do you want to ruin your eyes?!""My opthalmologist says that not wearing glasses cannot hurt the eyes even if those glasses are badly needed for adequate vision.""What does your opthalmologist think of the foreign situation?”
“Nobody likes me!""I wish I could like you, Charlie Brown, but I can't... If I were to like you, it would be admitting that I was lowering my standards! You wouldn't want me to do that, would you? Be reasonable! I have standards that I have set up for liking people, and you just don't meet those standards! It wouldn't be reasonable for me to like you!""I hate myself for being so unreasonable!”
“All of earth's creatures have, hidden within their beings, a wild uncontrollable urge to punt!”
“I've come to you because I need professional help... I get depressed when I realize how other girls hate me, and yet I know it's only jealousy... It's plain jealousy! They only hate me because I have naturally curly hair... They're jealous of me... What should I do?""Don't kid yourself, sister... Five cents, please!”
“Nobody gave me what I wanted for my birthday! Nobody! What sort of presents do you call these? New shoes, a green sweater and a bunch of stupid toys!""What were you expecting?""Real estate!”
“Charlie Brown says that we're put here on earth to make others happy.""Is that why we're here? I guess I'd better start doing a better job... I'd hate to be shipped back!”
“How can I play baseball when I'm worried about foreign policy?”
“May I ask a question, Lucy?""Go right ahead!""Just why do you want to draw this line all the way around the world?""Well, you know the old saying, Charlie Brown... You have to draw the line someplace!”
“I think I'm afraid of being happy because whenever I get too happy something bad always happens.”
“I am not concerned with simply surviving. I am very concerned about improving. I start each day by examining yesterday's work and looking for areas where I can improve. I am always trying to draw the characters better, and trying to design each panel somewhat in the manner a painter would treat his canvas.”
“When they [visitors to his studio:] learn about the six-week daily-strip deadline and the 12-week Sunday-page deadline, a visitor almost never fails to remark: "Gee, you could work real hard, couldn't you, and get several months ahead and then take the time off?"Being, as I said, a slow learner, it took me until last year to realize what an odd statement that really is. You don't work all of your life to do something so you don't have to do it.”
“I'm depressed! I'm completely depressed! I am firmly convinced that there is no one in this world who really likes me!""So what else is new?”
“I wonder if there's such a thing as a spiritual dentist? I think my whole personality is full of cavities!”
“Aren't the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton... I could just lie here all day, and watch them drift by... If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud formations... What do you think you see, Linus?""Well, those clouds up there look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean... That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor... And that group of clouds over there gives me the impression of the stoning of Stephen... I can see the apostle Paul standing there to one side...""Uh huh... That's very good... What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?""Well, I was going to say I saw a ducky and a horsie, but I changed my mind!”
“All I wanted to do was be a hero... But do I ever get to be a hero? All I ever get to be is the stupid goat!""Don't be discouraged, Charlie Brown... In this life we live, there are always some bitter pills to be swallowed...""If it's all the same with you, I'd rather not renew my perscription!”
“Sometimes I feel that life has passed me by... Do you ever feel that way, Charlie Brown?""I feel that it has knocked me down and walked all over me!”
“Snowflakes fascinate me... Millions of them falling gently to the ground... And they say that no two of them are alike! Each one completely different from all the others... The last of the rugged individualists!”
“I feel sorry for little babies... When a little baby is born into this cold world, he's confused! He's frightened! He needs something to cheer him up... The way I see it, as soon as a baby is born, he should be issued a banjo!”
“You know, in a way, 'Dear Santa Claus' is rather stuffy... Perhaps something a little more intimate would be better... Something just a shade more friendly...""How about 'Dear Fatty'?”
“How is the birdhouse coming along, Charlie Brown?""Well, I'm a lousy carpenter, I can't nail straight, I can't saw straight and I always split the wood... I'm nervous, I lack confidence, I'm stupid, I have poor taste and absolutely no sense of design... So, all things considered, it's coming along okay!”
“Be yourself. No one can say you're doing it wrong.”
“Look out!! Ha! Now you've done it! Now you've broken a lamp, and you've got no one to blame it on but yourself!""Maybe I could blame it on society!”
“Life is just too much for me. I've been confused right from the day I was born... I think the whole trouble is that we're thrown into life too fast... We're not really prepared...""What did you want... A chance to warm up first?”
“These rocks are a release for my pent-up emotions. When I feel all tied up inside, I just stand here and throw rocks into that vacant lot!""Hello, Charlie Brown, you blockhead!""Sometimes I think I'm kind of a vacant lot myself...”
“So you have a new baby sister, huh Charlie Brown?Yes, and I'm so happy...Happy?! I suppose it's never occurred to you that over-population is a serious problem?!”
“I have deep feelings of depression... What can I do about this?''Snap out of it! Five cents, please.”
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.”
“Five hundred years from now, who'll know the difference?!”
“If you grit your teeth and show real determination, you'll always have a chance.”
“I feel kind of depressed today... Do you ever have the feeling that life has passed you by?Worse than that... Sometimes I think life and I are going in opposite directions!”
“I enjoy looking at your face... Whenever I look at your face, a question always comes to my mind... Will man ever succeed in reaching the moon?”
“There sure are a lot of these 'instant' products on the market. Instant coffee, instant tea, instant pudding, instant cereal... instant dislike.”
“Never worry about tomorrow, Charlie Brown. Tomorrow will soon be today, and before you know it, today will be yesterday! I always worry about the day after tomorrow!”
“Lucy: You learn more when you lose Charlie Brown: Well then I must be the smartest person in world!!!”
“There's a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker. ”
“A kiss on the nose does much toward turning aside anger.”