Study yourself the way a hunter studied prey. Exploit your own weaknesses to create desired changes within yourself.

I write constantly, so it flows from one project to the next, and I would edit everything endlessly if I had the chance. I can always see ways to improve what I've done. At the same time, knowing it's all an ongoing life's work allows me to be less precious about blind alleys, failed experiments, and misfires.

There are dozens of unfinished or aborted projects in my files, but I can only assume they don't get done because they're not robust enough to struggle through the birth process.

Talking to oneself, I have often thought, is the best way to be sure of intelligent and witty conversation.

Study yourself the way a hunter studied prey. Exploit your own weaknesses to create desired changes within yourself.

I'm lucky to have a job doing something I really love to do, and I'm happy to accept the pressures of relentless deadlines or reader expectations as necessary evils. It's probably not as stressful as mining coal or leading men into battle.

And that's why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death.