I'm usually the last to see my influence in other people's work. People give me stuff and say "Oh look, this guy's ripping you off," and I'm like "What do you mean?" Often I see the people that I've ripped off filtered into my own work. In other people's work, I can only see specific, tiny little instances of inflections stolen from another artist.

I think I've had the fantasy of a ray-gun that could erase the world from the time I was a very little kid.

I try to employ a different strategy for each story. Often, I'll have a specific look in mind before I even have the story to go with it. I'm not so much interested in forcing the issue of reader identification through various graphic tricks. I'm more interested in creating specific characters that resonate with my own particular inner struggles.

It's a challenge to express real life in dramatic terms. In an entirely "made-up" story, you are sometimes overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities.

Everybody just lets the media do their thinking for them... that's why you'll never hear any reggae on the radio!

Face it, you hate every single boy on the face of the Earth!" "That's not TRUE, I just hate all these obnoxious, extroverted, pseudo-bohemian art-school losers

As soon as I'm finished with it, it feels like an impersonal project. Like, "Well, I did another book."