Randall Munroe quotes

You don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process. (Randall Munroe)
I used to work at NASA in Virginia. It was nothing glamorous; I was just tasked with making code compile for obscure projects, and I wasn't very good at it. Now I spend most of my time drawing pictures and looking at funny things on the Internet, which in retrospect is largely what I did at my old job, too. View quote
Randall Munroe
It's tempting to just write a comic called 'Everyone Mail Randall Munroe Twenty Bucks' - maybe it would work, and I could just close down the 'xkcd' store and sit on a beach and draw pictures and make snarky Reddit posts for the rest of my life. View quote
Randall Munroe
Google owns YouTube, and recently, I drew a comic about an idea for a YouTube feature - which they actually took seriously and implemented. So I'm thinking that maybe we'll have a future where Google is 'xkcd.' View quote
Randall Munroe
I read comics and I did science, and never really put them together until I accidentally found myself in the middle of one. View quote
Randall Munroe
I don't have hard numbers about this, but the impression I get is that the amount of eyeballs you get from being on the humor shelf at Barnes & Noble - it is almost insignificant. View quote
Randall Munroe
The thing about the Internet is that you can write something... for a very narrow audience and make a living at it. View quote
Randall Munroe
Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they're frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously. View quote
Randall Munroe
I've always thought that one of the the great thing about physics is that you can add more digits to any number and see what happens and nobody can stop you. View quote
Randall Munroe
I think the really cool and compelling thing about math and physics is that it opens up entry to all these hypotheticals - or at least, it gives you the language to talk about them. But at the same time, if a scenario is completely disconnected from reality, it's not all that interesting. View quote
Randall Munroe
I learned very early on in life that not everyone wants to hear every fact in the world, even if you want to tell them everything you've ever read. (Randall Munroe)
A lot of people will refer to comics by number to me, and I'll realize they're expecting me to remember all the comics by number. And I can't even remember what I ate this morning, let alone which comic was #473! View quote
Randall Munroe
Once I got married, I started working from an office. I found that having somewhere to go that isn't my house is mentally helpful: 'This is the place where I answer email and write blog posts,' and 'over there is the place where I do the dishes.' View quote
Randall Munroe
What people don't appreciate, when they picture Terminator-style automatons striding triumphantly across a mountain of human skulls, is how hard it is to keep your footing on something as unstable as a mountain of human skulls. Most humans probably couldn't manage it, and they've had a lifetime of practice at walking without falling over. View quote
Randall Munroe
It used to be if you wanted to do a newspaper comic, you had to appeal to a pretty big chunk of the newspaper's readership for them to want to keep you around. 'Dilbert' would be office humor, but even that is pretty widely experienced. View quote
Randall Munroe
I'm sad that my childhood came just slightly before the lithium-ion-battery boom, because I would've killed for the cheap radio-controlled helicopters they have now. View quote
Randall Munroe
The nice thing about being on the Internet is that you're not as recognisable as someone that's been on TV. View quote
Randall Munroe
When I was in college, I had a fear of cancer. View quote
Randall Munroe
I'm just one of those people who can always tell the same story twice, forgetting that I've told it already. View quote
Randall Munroe
There is a danger of building an identity around the idea of being smart because it is very easy to become off-putting, to become exclusionary. View quote
Randall Munroe
It's amazing what's buried in old, poorly digitized PDFs hosted on some random professor's website. (Randall Munroe)
People in my world can be disdainful of political and social problems and solutions. But we're never going to stop needing those. View quote
Randall Munroe
Lots of people in aggregate might know who I am, but they are spread around across the country and the world. View quote
Randall Munroe
A lot of times, the idea of a comic will be, 'Wouldn't it be cool if you...' But instead of doing it, I'll draw a comic about it. View quote
Randall Munroe
I think that putting merchandising into the hands of the artist themselves is one of the best things for the artist. View quote
Randall Munroe