You can give some kind of spark of life to a comic that a photograph doesn't really have. A photograph, even if it's connecting with you, it seems very dead on the page sometimes.

Comics seldom move me the way I would be moved by a novel or movie. I say this as someone who would rather read comics than watch movies, listen to music, anything. But it's not an operatic medium. I hear other people talk about being moved to tears by comics. I can't imagine that.

In an art school it's very hard to tell who is the best.

I think politics has an influence on my work now, perhaps more so than when I was a childless young man, but I hope never to deal with these kinds of issues in anything more than a covert manner. I'm more interested in figuring out what I think than in pronouncing my views to the world.

Usually when I put together a book like this Death-Ray hardcover or that Ghost World special edition, then I have to reread it and see if there is anything I want to change or any re-coloring I want to do. That's when I'm faced with the actual work. When I'm working, I'm too close to it. I'm sort of inside, and I can't see it at all. So when I have that experience of rereading it years later, it's jarring.

You try to make the world a better place and what does it get you? I mean, Christ, how the hell does one man stand a chance against four billion assholes?

I started drawing at a very young age. Writing a story wasn't satisfying, but to actually draw our own world - it's like controlling your own dreams.