One of the best memories of my life is contemplating that first finished drawing and realizing I had cracked the code, that I could make drawings like this whenever I wanted.

Leslie Stein's comics give readers privileged access to a complete and wholly original world of gently skewed wonders.

I could never write about the sort of people John Cheever or John Updike or even Margaret Atwood write about. I don't mean I couldn't write as well as they do, which of course I couldn't; they're great writers, and I'm no writer at all. But I couldn't even write badly about normal, neurotic people. I don't know that world from the inside. That's just not my orientation.

One of the best memories of my life is contemplating that first finished drawing and realizing I had cracked the code, that I could make drawings like this whenever I wanted.

Every time I write something down I check it to see if it has that telltale glow, the glow that tells me there's something there. If it glows, it stays. Everything is either on or off.

People aren't interested in seeing themselves as they really are.

I wanted to be a pariah, because all my heroes were cult artists, people who devoted their lives to poking into very narrow, very deep corners - Erik Satie, Alfred Jarry, Malcolm Lowry - people who suffered in order to express their vision of life.