If you want to be an artist, you have to know that art is an ongoing practice, that you're part of a long line. Take this test: if someone offered you a billion dollars, but you could never draw another illustration or write another word, would you take it? If you reject it, you need to find another way to pay the bills, but you're still an artist.

A lot of young artists in particular think you can just do one great thing and then sit back and collect checks. Most artists, even people like Dan Clowes, who's one of my heroes, don't just do comics. He does paid illustration. He writes screenplays, and so forth, working and selling lots of different things.

For me getting paid for art is a class issue. I don't have the luxury not to care. It's great if your parents buy you a house and you can sell your 400-page book for $2. But for marginalized people it's not as cool to martyr yourself.

I just don't think that being unable to forgive someone is the most healing move. It can be, and I've had times in my life when I thought I would be better off without the drama that another person was bringing to me, but cutting someone out isn't always the answer. I know someone who cut her mother out and it didn't magically heal her. She's still haunted. It's not as if you can wipe clean all of your memories of having a mother, or wanting or needing one.

People who choose to cut their parents out completely are super brave, but it's complicated and for me, I'd rather give the relationship a little bit of a try, however imperfect it is.

If you want to be an artist, you have to know that art is an ongoing practice, that you're part of a long line. Take this test: if someone offered you a billion dollars, but you could never draw another illustration or write another word, would you take it? If you reject it, you need to find another way to pay the bills, but you're still an artist.