Alison Bechdel

American cartoonist, author

Alison Bechdel is an American cartoonist. Originally known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir Fun Home, which was subsequently adapted as a musical that won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015.

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About the Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdelis an American cartoonist. Originally known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir Fun Home, which was subsequently adapted as a musical that won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. In 2012, she released her second graphic memoir Are You My Mother? She was a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Award. She is also known for originating the Bechdel test.

33 Quotes by Alison Bechdel

  1. 1.

    Well, I’m always working on my comic strip and trying to, you know, keep cranking that out.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  2. 2.

    Yeah, I read Judy Blume. My mother didn’t like that, but I read it anyhow.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  3. 3.

    My mother is, my father certainly was. They were kind of the local intelligentsia in the town where I grew up.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  4. 4.

    I don’t know, maybe it’s because I was raised Catholic. Confession has always held a great appeal for me.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  5. 5.

    Autobiographical comics, I love them. I love them.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  6. 6.

    I’m pretty illiterate when it comes to comics history.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  7. 7.

    But mostly, it’s a book about my relationship with my father.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  8. 8.

    But I read comic books. I read things like Richie Rich and Little Lulu.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  9. 9.

    I probably read Harriet the Spy about 70,000 times.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  10. 10.

    I never really read superhero stuff as a kid.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  11. 11.

    Even drawing gray hair at all is difficult to render in black and white.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  12. 12.

    It’s definitely part of it, that the men were having fun and doing the interesting things but also, I don’t know, I’m just thinking more about gender and how maybe in some way I am more of a boy than a girl.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  13. 13.

    Sometimes I wish the writing and drawing were more integrated.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  14. 14.

    I get a lot of mail from men who really identify with Stuart, you know, Sparrow’s boyfriend. I love that. Even though I used to say I wanted men to read the strip even though there weren’t any men in it, so they’d be forced to identify with the women.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  15. 15.

    It’s a hard thing to age a character because you can’t really suddenly give someone gray hair.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  16. 16.

    When I was growing up in the 1960s, there was starting to be more books geared towards young adults.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  17. 17.

    One of them is already having some menopausal symptoms. I’m working on that. I’m giving them all little lines under the eyes, trying to sort of make them age gracefully.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  18. 18.

    When I grew up, I studied karate for years. I got pretty strong, but eventually I had to acknowledge that I really didn’t like fighting at all, so I quit.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  19. 19.

    Mostly it was Mad magazine. And I did read a lot of – I had a subscription when I was little, but I also had access to some old collections, the little paperbacks of the really good stuff.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  20. 20.

    I hope that I can get people to read it without having to change it. Especially now that the strip has more different kinds of characters. It’s really not all lesbians any more.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  21. 21.

    People really want to think that these things really happened. I don’t know why that important, but I know that when I finish reading a novel or something, I want to know how much of that really happened to this author.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  22. 22.

    And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  23. 23.

    I just met someone who read Gone With the Wind 62 times for exactly that same reason. She couldn’t bear that it wasn’t real. She wanted to live in it.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  24. 24.

    Nancy Drew was always changing her outfits. I despised girls’ clothing, I couldn’t wait to get home from school and get out of it. The last thing I wanted to read was minute descriptions of Nancy’s frocks.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  25. 25.

    I started to get bored with that stuff about only drawing men and I’ve taken it out of the slideshow.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  26. 26.

    I love Jules Feiffer. I didn’t discover him until I was a little older.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  27. 27.

    Partly I resented being perceived as weak because I was a girl.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  28. 28.

    I just have this sort of entrepreneurial spirit and I work really hard at promoting myself.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  29. 29.

    Writing this book feels like a completely different activity from writing my comic strip because it’s about real life. I feel like I’m using a part of my brain that’s been dormant until now.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  30. 30.

    The satiric ethos of Mad was a much bigger childhood influence.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  31. 31.

    That’s all true, but there was something else going on for me as a kid, something about my gender identity that I haven’t figured out yet. And that’s one of the things I’m hoping to dissect and investigate in this memoir project.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  32. 32.

    For some reason writing and drawing are very separate processes for me.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author

  33. 33.

    Watching everyone root through their psyche, it just delights me. Especially R. Crumb’s stuff.

    Alison Bechdel

    American cartoonist, author