Dave Sim

 (born May 17, 1956, in Hamilton, Ontario) is a Canadian comic-book writer and artist. Sim is best known as the creator of the 6,000-page graphic novel  (1977–2004).

Sourced

 * If something knocks you five degrees out of whack, the journey of a thousand miles that begins with a single step ends up thousands of miles away from its intended destination.


 * It seems to me a core element of belief in God that a choice is a choice and it eliminates all other choices.


 * What the feminists and their ventriloquist puppet husbands are talking about doing with Government-Funded Daycare is raising children as if they were a herd of interchangeable swine. No surprise coming from a gender which has no ethics, no scruples, no sense of right and wrong.


 * I'd rather live in the gutter embracing reality than live like a king embracing unreality.


 * If you really want to do it nothing and no one is going to stop you, if you don't really want to do it, nothing and no one is going to help you.


 * I'd rather take a major financial hit being honest than get rich by lying.

Dave Sim's Collected Letters Volume 2 (2007)

 * Reality is reality. It is the way things are, not the way you want them to be in your head.


 * Pointing out that there's a turd lying on the carpet is not the same as shitting on the carpet.(p. 75)

Following Cerebus (2004-)

 * I take it as a given that God's knowledge of the Cerebus storyline dwarfs my own as God's knowledge of everything dwarfs my own. (#2, p. 9)


 * [A]n attractive lie is always going to be more popular than a hard truth. (No. 11, p. 27)


 * Because I say what is empirically true: nothing exists except God, I am deemed to be insane. (ibid, p. 28)

Collected Letters 2004

 * In my experience women are like cats. When you don't want them you can't get rid of them and when you do want them it's like trying to pick up lint with a magnet. (p. 267)

Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing (1997)

 * The first five years that I did Cerebus I could have made more money baby-sitting (that isn't a joke). Five years. Think about it. (p. 20)


 * In any creative field--any creative field--you must first understand that you have no value whatsoever. Your work has no value whatsoever. You are completely worthless. Whatever potential you have is just that--potential--and when you are discussing self-publishing a comic book, you have about the same chance of success as 10 thousand others. (p. 21)


 * ...there is very little about self-publishing a comic book that can be taught, but everything about it can be learned. (p. 21)


 * Stop trying to impress some art-school teacher with a stick up his butt whose opinions you never respected from the time you entered his class until you left it 10 years ago. Draw like you. (p. 27)


 * Get out of your own way. (p.28)


 * The greatest mistake you can make is to say that your work is better than a lot of the shit that's out there. No doubt. But being better than shit is not exactly a shining credential. (p. 30)


 * No companies are ever going to pay you enough money to sue them successfully. (pp. 50-51)

Melmoth (1991)

 * Oscar: In a society where dissenting viewpoints are suppressed, those viewpoints are potent and dangerous... Where dissent is tolerated, it rapidly becomes quaint and is viewed as un-sophisticated; people merely amuse themselves with the expression of contrary opinion. (p. 41)

Church & State volume I (1987)

 * Cerebus: The valuable lesson is that you can get what you want and still not be very happy... (p. 296)


 * Anything done for the first time unleashes a demon. (Cover and title of Cerebus #65, August 1984, collected in Church & State I, p. 7 and 273)
 * Usually quoted with "Anything" unspaced (as in the title p. 7), sometimes quoted spaced (as in the art p. 273, as "Any thing done for the first time unleashes a demon.") because the cover art piles "Any" and "thing" (though they are joined, the leg of the "y" being also the bar of the "t").
 * Compare to a quote misattributed to Emily Dickinson: "Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon." (origin and date unknown, also attributed to Dave Sim)