Charles Schulz on not taking inspiration from television

I think comic strips should live a life of their own. Don't get involved too much with television. You have to show characters watching it, because it's part of our lives. But whatever you do, don't use expressions that have become famous on television. You are out there to create your own language and your own expressions. You are creating in a medium just as good as anything they do on television. We can do things that live actors can never do. A live actor could never pull a football away and show Charlie Brown up in the air and landing flat on his back. These are things they could never do.

We have to stay within our medium, so I say don't rely too much on watching television, and trying to make comments on things you see on the screen there. There are wonderful things in Bartlett's Quotations, little bits of poetry and such. I always liked the one from either Tolstoy or Scott Fitzgerald -- I don't know who it was -ー "In the real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning." That's a real cartoon idea for your characters.