Never argue with a six-year-old who shaves.

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you'll have to find your inner motivation to seek for new ideas on your own.

I'd always enjoyed the comics more, and felt that as long as I was unemployed it would be a good chance to pursue that and see what response I could get from asyndicate, as I didn't have anything to lose at that point. So I drew up a comic strip - this was in 1980 - and sent it off and got rejected. I continued that for five years with different comic strip examples 'til finally Calvin and Hobbes came together. But it's been a long road.

If you've got more ambiguous characters or stock stereotypes, the plastic comes through and they don't work as well.

I think the experience forced me to consider how interested I was in political cartooning. After I was fired, I applied to other papers but political cartooning, like all cartooning, is a very tough field to break into. Newspapers are very reluctant to hire their own cartoonists when they can get Oliphant or MacNelly through syndication for a twentieth of the price.

I go to school, but I never learn what I want to know.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement.