The perfect fascist state needs to operate in conditions of perpetual warfare. Have you ever noticed how the world has been in constant crisis since World War II?

Sometimes I pretend not to look at my own characters, because that's like different people getting off with your girlfriend or something.

American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he's too powerful; you can't give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman's relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it's still a story about your relatives visiting.

And I ask him why he cuts his arms with a razor. "Just fo feel. Just to feel something.

I thought I could capture the stories of the city on paper. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city. Horror stories you see. I tell you I didn't have to look far for material. Everywhere I looked, there were stories hidden there in the dark corners. . . . I wrote and still there were more. . . . No one would publish them. 'Too horrible,' they said. 'Sick mind,' they said. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city but the horror is too big and it goes on forever.

Who needs girls when you've got comics?

Stop being frightened. You only see a monster because they want you to see monsters everywhere. They've conditioned you to look for monsters in every shadow, every coat hung on every door. As long as we keep seeing monsters, we'll continue to need protection and that's how other people get to control our lives.