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.”
“Look at Charlie Brown's face. Would you please hold still a minute Charlie Brown? I want Linus to study your face. Now this is what you call a failure face, Linus. Notice how it has failure written all over it. Study it carefully Linus. You rarely see such a good example. Notice the deep lines, the dull vacant look in the eyes. Yes, I would say this is one of the finest examples of a failure face that your liable to see for a long while.”
“I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong.”
“We used to have a dog named Snoopy, you know, a real live dog. I suppose people who love Snoopy won't like it, but we gave him away. He fought with other dogs, so we traded him in for a load of gravel.”
“Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement. ”
“Are you upset little friend? Have you been lying awake worrying? Well, don't worry...I'm here. The flood waters will recede, the famine will end, the sun will shine tomorrow, and I will always be here to take care of you.”
“Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you're the Charlie Brownest.”
“Sometimes you lie in bed at night, and you don't have a single thing to worry about...That always worries me! ”
“Linus: What's wrong, Charlie Brown? Charlie Brown: I just got terrible news. The teacher says we're going on a field trip to an art museum; and I have to get an A on my report or I'll fail the whole course. Why do we have to have all this pressure about grades, Linus? Linus: Well, I think that the purpose of going to school is to get good grades so then you can go on to high school; and the purpose is to study hard so you can get good grades so you can go to college; and the purpose of going to college is so you can get good grades so you can go on to graduate school; and the purpose of that is to work hard and get good grades so we can get a job and be successful so that we can get married and have kids so we can send them to grammar school to get good grades so they can go to high school to get good grades so they can go to college and work hard... Charlie Brown: Good grief!”
“Linus: It was a short summer, Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown: And it looks like it's gonna be a looong winter. ”
“Who are you writing to, Linus?""This is the time of year to write to the Great Pumpkin. On Halloween Night, the Great Pumpkin rises out of his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys for all the children!""You must be crazy! When are you going to stop believing in something that isn't true?""When *you* stop believing in that fellow with a red suit and the white beard who goes, 'Ho, ho, ho!'" "We're obviously separated by denominational differences.”
“Just wait and see, Charlie Brown. I'll see the Great Pumpkin. I'll SEE the Great Pumpkin! Just you wait, Charlie Brown. The Great Pumpkin will appear and I'll be waiting for him...”
“Well, I can understand how you feel. You worked hard, studying for the spelling bee, and I suppose you feel you let everyone down, and you made a fool of yourself and everything. But did you notice something, Charlie Brown?" "What's that?""The world didn't come to an end.”
“Snoopy: So this is the last day of the year. Another complete year gone by and what have I accomplished this year that I haven't accomplished every other year? Nothing! (He smiles.) How consistent can you get?”
“Linus: What would you say you want most out of life, Charlie Brown? To be happy? CB: Oh, no. I don't expect that. I really don't. I just don't want to be unhappy! ”
“Linus: Nothing goes on forever. All good things must come to an end...Charlie: When do the good things start?”
“Lucy: Do you think you have Pantophobia, Charlie Brown?Charlie: I don't know, what is pantophobia?Lucy: The fear of Everything.Charlie: THAT'S IT!!!”
“No problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from!”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.”
“It always looks darkest just before it gets totally black.”
“There is nothing more attractive than a nice smile”
“Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.”
“LINUS: Where are you going for Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown?CHARLIE: My father, my mother, Sally, and I are all going to my grandmothers for dinner.SALLY: Do you want to come too, Linus? We can hold hands under the table.LINUS: BLECH!”
“There is no greater burden than great potential.”
“My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?”
“I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time.”
“Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.”
“Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos.”
“I'm dying and all I hear are insults!”
“In the Book of Life, The answers aren't in the back.”
“Never jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker.”
“Stop worrying about the world ending today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.”
“This is my depressed stance. When you're depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you'll start to feel better. If you're going to get any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this.”
“If I stand here, I can see the Little Red Haired girl when she comes out of her house... Of course, if she sees me peeking around this tree, she'll think I'm the dumbest person in the world... But if I don't peek around the tree, I'll never see her... Which means I probably AM the dumbest person in the world... which explains why I'm standing in a batch of poison oak.”
“It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.”
“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.”
“All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed.For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog.”
“Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.”
“Just thinking about a friend makes you want to do a happy dance, because a friend is someone who loves you in spite of your faults.”
“Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, "Is life a multiple choice test or is it a true or false test?" ...Then a voice comes to me out of the dark and says, "We hate to tell you this but life is a thousand word essay.”
“Happiness is a warm puppy.”
“I love mankind ... it's people I can't stand!!”