The success [of the X-Men], I think, is for two reasons. The first is that, creatively, the book was close to perfect ... but the other reason is that it was a book about being different in a culture where, for the first time in the West, being different wasn't just accepted, but was also fashionable. I don't think it's a coincidence that gay rights, black rights, the empowerment of women and political correctness all happened over those twenty years and a book about outsiders trying to be accepted was almost the poster-boy for this era in American culture.

I'm just running through this list of potential nannies and wondered if we should go for a superhero this time. Do you think Wolverine would be interested? He seems to be on every other team right now.

In the U.S., Superman or Batman or something, the law-enforcement people, are the most famous comic characters. Americans have a respect, I think, for badges and a respect for uniforms. I think that's, in some ways, quite a nice thing, but it can be dangerous, too, because it can obviously be abused.

Likewise, I see no shame in writing Captain America or Wolverine.

Cookbooks are almost a substitution for a lost sense of culture. People want some other life than the one they're living, so they buy a cookbook with pictures and imagine themselves as part of that life.

Leaders don't ever "arrive." If we ever think we're done, we are done!

I love the fact that they [girls ]are into Superman and Green Lantern and Batman and everything, and they really do have all those toys as well, but I don't want all their role models to be men.