I hardly ever use pencils. I'm left-handed and it's really messy if you're left-handed because of the graphite smudging. I use them more now than I used to because there's, like, 15,000 pencils all over my house.

The things I'm grateful for are: I had the one thing that I feel really lucky about, which is that I made something, I made art, that truly - in a weird way - truly comforted me and comforted a lot of people. And I'm really grateful that I got to have that experience.

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 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 had good relationships with stores. And I was like, "All right, I'll self-publish it. But I'm only going to do 1,000."

I'm interested in the structure of art and how it works. And the content is also interesting, but I don't want to keep the same structure and just plug in new content every week.

I've been really surprised about a lot of the negative comments about artisanal pencil sharpening. Like, it really rubs some people the wrong way.