When you do the kind of work I do, everything is challenging, but probably the most challenging thing is getting up in the morning and getting on with it because it's so easy to stay in bed and not get on with it.

At sixteen I was stupid, confused and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?

When I am working a book, I go through my library and take a look through some of the great cartoonists of the past, like Cliff Sterrett, who did "Polly and Her Pals," or Winsor McCay who did "A Little Nemo in Slumberland," and Herriman - and I just looked through these guys and looked for somebody to steal. You know, looked for who I could swipe, or turn into - who's work I will turn into my work. And I still use, after all these years, these artists as inspirations. So, here in my eighties, I go back to when I was eight for my inspiration.

I'm not electronically geared at all; I'm really a 19th century cartoonist. I have a 15-year-old daughter, and what she's attracted to is of course iPod and this pod and that, I mean stuff I don't even begin to know - I never learned how to type for Christ's sake! I can't get in her head and find out what she would do if she had the kind of talent I had, I don't have a clue. Every generation comes up with its own quirkiness and its own culture which gets its inspiration from what's in the air at that time.

I have no sense of direction; I never know where I am. When I back up a car, I'm more likely to hit what's behind me than not, because I have no vision for it. I've never been able to play games or play cards because I can't in my head get the next move. I've never been able to balance a checkbook. So there's some brain damage, but it may be that very brain damage that allows me to do the work I do. I've never met a cartoonist who isn't quirky or weird in some ways.

Imagination continually frustrates tradition; that is its function.

There's no rap against comics that isn't true. They were sexist, they were racist, you name it - and they kind of gloried in that.