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.

Once you use a toothbrush to clean a pencil sharpener, you should no longer use it to clean your teeth.

I would make a comic for Rolling Stone every two weeks, because they're biweekly. And then I would make weekly comics for my weekly papers. It was on two parallel tracks. And then they all got collected in a book.

People think, "Wow, people in America have so much money, they're sending hundreds of pencils to this guy." I don't think those people realize that most people who are buying these pencils are buying them as art objects or conversation pieces.

Any working cartoonist will tell you this, anybody who's working in a creative field: at some point, it's a job. You have deadlines. I think, for over a year, I refused to make them for publications, because I only wanted to make them when I wanted to make them. But at some point, I was like, "This is crazy, you have an opportunity to be a professional cartoonist.

I've never been good at self-promotion. And my URL is really obscure. And for years and years, there was nothing about me on my website.

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.