Bil Keane

Cartoonist

1922-10-05 – 2011-11-08

Bil Keane was an American cartoonist best known for creating the long-running comic strip The Family Circus. His work focused on family life and appeared in newspapers for decades.

Books by Bil Keane

The Family Circus
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Pasghetti & Meat Bulbs
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Good morning sunshine!
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Quotes by Bil Keane

God put Santa Claus on earth to remind us that Christmas is 'sposed to be a happy time.
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Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.
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Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.
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God put Santa Claus on earth to remind us that Christmas is 'sposed to be a happy time.
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I didn't always spell my name Bil. My parents named me Bill, but when I started drawing cartoons on the wall, they knocked the 'L' out of me.
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I think it's a novelty for cartoon characters to cross over into another strip or panel occasionally.
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When I was in high school at Northeast Catholic in Philadelphia in the late '30s, I found that drawing caricatures of the teachers and satirizing the events in the school, then having them published in our school magazine, got me some notoriety.
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Many of the network television shows have done takeoffs on 'Family Circus,' including 'David Letterman,' 'Friends,' 'Roseanne,' and others, and, in my estimation the use of them is a compliment to the popularity of the feature, which just by mentioning it's name sets up the image of a warm, loving family-type feature.
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Many of my cartoons are not a belly laugh. I go for nostalgia, the lump in the throat, the tear in the eye, the tug in the heart.
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Some may look on my work as being corny or old hat and wonder if my observations on the typical family are passe, what with the single-parent family and mixed family units.
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I don't have to come up with a ha-ha belly laugh every day, but drawings with warmth and love or ones that put a lump in the throat. That's more important to me than a laugh.
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They invented hugs to let people know you love them without saying anything.
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Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present.
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I never studied art, but taught myself to draw by imitating the New Yorker cartoonists of that day, instead of doing my homework.
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