I don't think there's any independent cartoonist whose stuff I don't like or respect in at least some way or another. We're all marginal laborers - we're practically medical oddities - so I don't see why we can't all be nice to each other.

Well, there are better cartoonists now than there ever have been. I firmly believe that. There's some amazing work being done.

I lose faith every time I have to start a new page, and this is no joke. I've occasionally been criticized over the past couple of years for publicly "complaining" about how difficult drawing comics is, yet I've only mentioned it so that the younger cartoonists who are trying it out and finding it difficult and painful realize that they're not alone. There's not really any set way of learning how to do this, and it's always a struggle to improve, and, more importantly, see accurately whether or not one's work is communicating any shred of feeling or truth at all.

The thing I like most about books is that anybody can afford them. They have an innate valuelessness.

My grandmother was an unparalleled storyteller who gave me a preview of how life might turn out, and also fortified my empathy.

I guess I consider myself a cartoonist first, though I was "trained" as a painter/printmaker/sculptor. If there's still any resistance to cartooning in the nuts-and-bolts world of acquiring the means of survival, it's probably mostly on the pay scale. If graphic novels are selling really well and are "growing the book market" or whatever it is a businessman would say about them, I don't see it in the remuneration offered by some of the publishers.

Cartooning isn't really drawing, any more than talking is singing... The possible vocabulary of comics is by definition unlimited, the tactility of an experience told in pictures outside the boundaries of words, and the rhythm of how these drawings 'feel' when read is where the real art resides.