It's only those exceptional and rare individuals who have brilliant ideas delivered to them by the muse, complete and gift wrapped. The rest of us have to work at it.

I'm 65 years old. Everyday the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time.

And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

I've had years of bizarre hallucinogenic magical experiences in which I believed I had communicated with entities that may well have been disassociated parts of my own personality or conceivably some independent entity of a metaphysical nature. Both would seem equally interesting.

While a truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.

I don’t think people realise how vital libraries are or what a colossal danger it would be if we were to lose any more. Having had a truncated school life myself, all of my education from the age of 17 has been self-taught. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for the opportunities the library gave me.

In many ways, my entire graphic novel career was a long diversion. Originally, all I wanted to do was to be an underground cartoonist and maybe bring out a groovy underground mag.