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

There is something about the medium [in comics] that allows for a simulation of actual experience with the added benefit of actually reading. You're reading pictures, but you are also looking at them. It's a sort of combined activity that I can't really think of any other medium having, other than, say, a foreign film when you are reading and seeing. It allows for all sorts of associations that might not come up with just words or just pictures.

The thing I don't understand is why so often one hears discussion of the fruits of human labor as if it's all the creation of some alien race.

The real power of comics is writing as you draw.

Comics, at least in periodical form, exist almost entirely free of any pretense; the critical world of art hardly touches them, and they're 100% personal.

I don't think of myself as an illustrator. I think of myself as a cartoonist. I write the story with pictures - I don't illustrate the story with the pictures.

I think it has most to do with the way in which a story is told, whether it feels real either via the music of the telling or the honesty of the story.