I've never sat down to quantify how many hours I actually spend on the strip. I use the deadlines to estimate my progress; each month I know that I have to produce so many strips, and by the end of the month I'll make sure that I have.

That's one of the remarkable things about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse.

It's gratifying to hear that from people who care about comic art. I never know what to make of it when someone writes to say, "Calvin and Hobbes is the best strip in the paper. I like it even more than Nancy."

I know the world isn't fair, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?

I'm learning skills I will use for the rest of my life by doing homework...procrastinating and negotiation.

It seems the less I do and say, the better everyone likes my work!

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.