If this book has made any point clear, I hope it's that things don't have to be real to be true. Or vice versa.

I AM happy”. They understood what we english people have long forgot. We're not our sadness. We're not our happiness or our pain but our language hypnotizes us and traps us in little labelled boxes ()

Burnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words.

I don't like to think of my readership as "fans," a word which has always suggested a kind of power relationship I'm uncomfortable with.

The 'medium' is unaware of its attractiveness, that's all. Everyone loves comics. I've proven this to my own satisfaction by handing them out to acountants, insurance brokers, hairdressers, mothers of children, black belts, pop stars, taxi drivers, painters, lesbians, doctors etc. etc. The X-Files, Buffy, the Matrix, X-Men - mainstream culture is not what it once was when science fiction and comics fans huddled in cellars like Gnostic Christians dodging the Romans. We should come up into the light soon before we suffocate.

Enough madness? Enough? And how do you measure madness? - The Joker

I write dozens and dozens of pages more than I need, and then edit them down to size. It's more like sculpture than construction.