I think most cartoonists are solitary, lonely kids who use their work as a way to try to connect with the world. If I had any other skills that were more performative - if I could have been a musician or an actor - I'm sure I would have pursued that instead in order to get that instant feedback and to hear applause.

It's cold water in the face to realize you're not nearly as special and as unusual as you might have thought when you were an alienated teenager.

You start to get nervous when the value of a comic book or graphic novel is relative to the achievements of some other medium.

There were certainly some people who wanted me to do a feel-good story that affirmed a lot of very commonly held beliefs.

When email and the Internet came along, I never publish an email address. I just stuck with this P.O. Box address.

Look, there's no denying that comics have moved dramatically into the mainstream in North American culture in the last 10 years, and for someone like me who's always tried to make a living at it, it's been great, I'm very grateful for it. But at the same time, it's not a subculture-y thing anymore; it's something that's in the New York Times and the New Yorker.

The first time I did a reading/signing thing at Cody's, the woman who did the introduction said something like that, and I wasn't the only one cringing. I remember looking out into the audience and seeing people's faces and people whispering to each other, and thinking like "Ugh, can we just cancel the whole thing? I can't go out there after she said that."