I wasn't the kind of student that Pratt was looking for. They wanted patient people who would work on something forever. I didn't want to work on any project forever. I intended to get things done.

Some of my friends became gangsters. You became a gangster depending upon how fast you wanted a suit. Gangsters weren't the stereotypes you see in the movies. I knew the real ones, and the real ones were out for big money.

An artist has to be humble, an editor must be officious, and a publisher must be somewhere out in the galaxy enjoying godhood. It was a caste system, pure and simple. And it was accepted that way. Nobody thought of contracts, nobody thought of insisting on better deals.

I won't do anything bad, and I resent very deeply bad people who haven't got the ability, who try to interfere with the kind of work I'm trying to do because nobody's going to benefit from it.

I don't want to take somebody else's beating. That makes me unhappy.

Everybody was wary. This was a time when communists marched through the streets, waving flags and shouting. The unions did the same thing so you began to associate them.

Superman is going to live forever. They'll be reading Superman in the next century when you and I are gone. I felt, in that respect, I was doing the same thing. I wanted to be known. I wasn't going to sell a comic that was going to die quickly.