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.

I guess I just don't like being physically in front of people I don't know very well, because I expect to be "seen through," or, even worse, instantly hated.

The "essence" of comics is fundamentally the weird process of reading pictures, not just looking at them. I see the black outlines of cartoons as visual approximations of the way we remember general ideas, and I try to use naturalistic color underneath them to simultaneously suggest a perceptual experience, which I think is more or less the way we actually experience the world as adults; we don't really "see" anymore after a certain age, we spend our time naming and categorizing and identifying and figuring how everything all fits together.

I think cartooning gets at, and re-creates on the page, some sixth sense ... in a way no other medium can.

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

There's a rhythm to the words combined with the pictures [in a comic]. Whenever I'm working on a comic strip I re-read it, probably hundreds of times through to pay attention to how all of those things work. Sometimes even changing the angle of a character's eyebrow can really, seriously alter the effect and overall interpretation of a scene. And the insertion of a pause or a cough or a sniff, and all these things that we do in conversation, can bring it to life in a strange way.

Even the disappointing diffusion of a sheer curtain can suggest the most colorful bouquet of unspeakable secrets.