Quotes from The Cheese Monkeys

“Never fall in love with an idea. They're whores: if the one you're with isn't doing the job, there's always, always, always another.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Commercial Art tries to make you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Kiddies, Graphic Design, if you wield it effectively, is Power. Power to transmit ideas that change everything. Power that can destroy an entire race or save a nation from despair. In this century, Germany chose to do the former with the swastika, and America opted for the latter with Mickey Mouse and Superman.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Never fall in love with an idea. They’re whores: if the one you’re with isn’t doing the job there’s always, always, always another.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Yes, Garnett Grey was an Architect. Were a psychoanalyst to approach him from behind, tap his shoulder, and say 'Humanity,' Garrett'd spin and respond, without hesitation, 'Solvable'.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Just who are the cheese monkeys? And what do they want?”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Graphic Design for its own sake will never happen, because the concept cancels itself out — a poster about nothing other than itself is not Graphic Design, it's … makin' ART.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“After age twenty-five, you're not a victim anymore — you're a volunteer.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Nothing worth knowing can ever be taught in a classroom.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“My longing for someone to talk to made Himillsy the lightning bug in my honey jar. I punched holes in the lid so she could breathe.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“But at the end of the day, you can't major in Making Stuff, so it was Art by default.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“It's not Art. And Art is not Design.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“(...) photography opened up quite a little Pandora's box, kiddies. (...) Once we no longer had to depend on drawing and painting to record our existence — once they became an option — they mutated . . . into a form of expression. And Art for its own sake, God help us, was born.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Never let your mouth write a check that your ass can't cash.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Did they want what I wanted?
Did they want to understand, to unlock it? To decode it? To glean, to touch, to learn, to get something, to proceed, to get somewhere, to graduate, to work, to thrive; to someday, sometime, finally earn the luxury, the permission to … stop, to stop all of this, to relax, and forget?”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“On the first day of class, the Visual Arts building reclined before me like an old brick whore, egging me to show her one, last, good time. I doubted I was up to the task, but regardless, I entered from the rear, just to give myself the slightest mental edge.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“(...) I'm not much of anything, (...) besides bored and boring, punctuated by fits of scant self-amusement. And you are ...?”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Twenty-six letters: Marjorie Morningstar or Ulysses.
The man-made world means exactly that. There isn't an inch of it that doesn't have to be dealt with, figured out, executed. And it's waiting for you to decide what it's going to look like.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

“Penguin Classic, with the orange bands at the top and bottom; and the Gill Sans thirty-sixpoint title, all caps, centered and medium weight, in black on the white band in the middle. One of the designer Tschichold's prouder moments, when he finally woke the hell up and joined the twentieth century.”
― Chip Kidd, quote from The Cheese Monkeys

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Popular quotes

“In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control and to mask all emotion and intention behind bland, smiling, and agreeable public faces.
Kimberly seems to have perfected the requisite phoniness and even as I dislike her, my whole aim is to be welcomed into the same corporate culture that she seems to have mastered, meaning that I need to "get in the face" of my revulsion and overcome it. But until I reach that transcendent point, I seem to be stuck in an emotional space left over from my midteen years: I hate you; please love me.”
― Barbara Ehrenreich, quote from Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

“Angry? Yes, I'm angry: I'd be a lousy lawyer if I weren't.”
― Russell Banks, quote from The Sweet Hereafter

“At the height of the Cultural Revolution, rather than risk having to face dire consequences for his accumulated writings, he burned several kilos of manuscripts (ten plays, and many short stories, poems, and essays). For him it was an ordeal to part with what he had written. Moreover, it took a long time to burn so much paper without creating smoke and arousing suspicions.”
― Gao Xingjian, quote from One Man's Bible

“In a city like San Francisco, you can throw a rock out your front door and hit someone with a nice ass and pretty brown eyes. But to find someone you want to fall asleep with, someone you want to breathe and dream next to, is terribly rare.”
― Will Christopher Baer, quote from Hell's Half Acre

“History only suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.”
― Milton Friedman, quote from Capitalism and Freedom

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.