The amazing thing about Freak Out! was that there was nothing quite like it in rock 'n roll at the time. It was really simultaneously crude and ugly, and incredibly sophisticated. The Beatles were funny, but there was nothing with the kind of sneer that you could feel in the music of Frank Zappa.

I think in daily newspapers, the way comic strips are treated, it's as if newspaper publishers are going out of their way to kill the medium. They're printing the comics so small that most strips are just talking heads, and if you look back at the glory days of comic strips, you can see that they were showcases for some of the best pop art ever to come out.

Basically, everything I try to do is to present an alternative to what somebody else is doing.

Ah, sweet pity. Where would my love life be without it?

I don't mind sharing the blame if she'll just admit she started it.

'The Simpsons' is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but who drive you completely crazy.

The really great thing about having two TV shows going on at the same time is that I can go to one and say that I have to go and visit the other and then I can just go home and they don't know.