David Rees Quotes

Once you use a toothbrush to clean a pencil sharpener, you should no longer use it to clean your teeth.

Just because something makes you smile or laugh ... doesn't mean it's a joke.

Nobody could be a professional cartoonist, because you have to do something you don't like to do in order to be a responsible adult and pay the rent.

I have very limited craftsmanship. And a lot of the stuff I make plays on that.

I didn't dare to dream of making money. But now of course, I've made many thousands of dollars sharpening pencils.

I liked sharpening pencils and I was like, "Oh, I wonder if I could get paid to do it." And I figured it out and I did it.

I'm not a professional comedian. Nobody comes to my comedy shows. That's just a little hobby.

Talking about my personal life onstage, I've realized I'm not one of those comics who can do that. I can allude to it but I don't want to be a confessional performer.

I've always liked Richard Pryor. I've always responded to rhythmic profanity.

I've never been good at self-promotion. And my URL is really obscure. And for years and years, there was nothing about me on my website.

Obviously, I never had to sketch anything out. To me, that was the appeal of working with clip art, working digitally. You make it and it's done.

I like feeling like I'm discovering something new. That's really a special feeling and also, you don't have it that often. At least, I don't. Maybe I'm not creative enough.

I just wanted a really simple, dramatic way so that fans, people who were reading my comic, would be like, "This is something different." Just to flag it, almost.

I started sharpening pencils at the census and how that was a difficult time in my life because my marriage was ending and I had quit cartooning and I didn't know what to do with myself.

I hate self-publishing; it's a real drag and it takes up a lot of space.

I had good relationships with stores. And I was like, "All right, I'll self-publish it. But I'm only going to do 1,000."

I'm interested in the structure of art and how it works. And the content is also interesting, but I don't want to keep the same structure and just plug in new content every week.

I don't think I would've ever dared dreaming of becoming a professional cartoonist. I wouldn't set myself up for that disappointment.

I have a really analytical approach to art. And the whole idea that you can't analyze what makes a joke funny...I do not agree with that at all.

I feel like really thinking about art and really appreciating it and learning the language of it just makes you more of a connoisseur. I believe that.

I don't want to be one of these people who's like, "Man, I don't know where my ideas come from and I don't know why this works."

The time that I would spend revisiting my old Get Your War On strips is more profitably spent Googling myself and reading comments about how people hate my pencil-sharpening business.

I've been really surprised about a lot of the negative comments about artisanal pencil sharpening. Like, it really rubs some people the wrong way.

I'd always been really intimidated by prose writing.

The type of pop culture that is honestly very moving and powerful to me is [when artists] do their homework. They make it real.

It would be amazing to tell my grandchildren, like, 'Yeah, I was paid to sharpen 1,000 pencils.'

Everyone has pencils in their house, no matter how hip and contemporary they are.

The way you make money is to do something you don't like to do. And that's how you know you're a virtuous person.

I felt really conflicted about making money off stuff that's creatively satisfying.

I wanted to get paid to sharpen pencils originally just because I thought it would be fun.

I like to do things that are new, where I feel the sense of discovery.

I don't even drink Coke. It tastes like robot sweat.