I really don't have a lot in common with the people who attend the Comic Con. It's like assuming that all people who write prose are the same.

I think that the so-called average person often exhibits a great deal of heroism in getting through an ordinary day . . .

I always wanted praise and I always wanted attention; I won't lie to you. I was a jazz critic and that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, What could I do? I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act or anything like that. OK, I can write.

When you're dead, it robs life of many of it's pleasures

Comics are words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.

I wanted to write literature that pushed people into their lives rather than helping people escape from them.

I felt more alone that week than any. Sometimes I'd feel a body lying next to me like an amputee feels a phantom limb. All I did was think about Jennie Gerhardt and Alice Quinn and all the decades of people I had known. The more I thought, the more I felt like crying. Life seemed so sweet and so sad, and so hard to let go of in the end. But hey, man, every day is a brand new deal, right? Just keep on working and something's bound to turn up.