I just wanted a really simple, dramatic way so that fans, people who were reading my comic, would be like, "This is something different." Just to flag it, almost.

The way you make money is to do something you don't like to do. And that's how you know you're a virtuous person.

I started sharpening pencils at the census and how that was a difficult time in my life because my marriage was ending and I had quit cartooning and I didn't know what to do with myself.

I have very limited craftsmanship. And a lot of the stuff I make plays on that.

I take pop culture really seriously, I think it's really important, and the stuff that I make...I don't want it to be insubstantial, even if it's about something wacky, like sharpening pencils. I feel like I owe it to myself and I owe it to people who are really interested in pencils and I owe it to anybody to do my due diligence and give them something real.

I assumed that the pencil market was collapsing, but then it turns out that from 2010 to 2011 in the United States, pencil consumption went up by over six percent. I mean, those are all foreign-made pencils. Those are probably Chinese pencils, mostly, and Mexican pencils. I mean, it is an archaic communication technology, but it is still ubiquitous.

I was just worried that someone was gonna think that I had been commissioned by Jamba Juice to make cartoons about Jamba Juice. And the big thing for me was - if I'm not getting paid to sell out, I don't want people to think that I'm selling out.