I spend quite a bit of time thinking about my students. I look at them, at their work, I listen to what they tell me, and try to figure out who they might become in the best of all possible worlds. This is not easy. Students try to give you clues; sometimes they look at you as if imploring you to understand something about them that they don't yet have the means to articulate. How can one succeed at this? And how can one do it 20 times over for all the students in a class? It's impossible, of course. I know this, but I try anyway. It's tiring.

It always seems to people that I'm avoiding saying, 'It's autobiographical,' but I really do believe that human beings make stories and they make themselves. If I told you the same story twelve years ago, I could have emphasized something different. The importance changes, the meaning of things shifts over time. Also, I think all art is autobiographical. Every endeavor is full of impressions of ourselves.

I don't think it's possible to teach a person to be an artist. But yet, I'm here, and I suppose this is what I'm expected to do. I teach a course called graphic narrative and one called digital studios, but no matter the topic, the basic principle underlying my "method" of teaching is that a properly prepared artist/creator must simply know everything. Not just how to draw, but how to see. Not just how to use a computer program, but what the word "penultimate" means. And the shape and orientation of a goat's pupil. And where Kentucky and Chile are, at least approximately.

I didn't struggle to find my style - I prefer to call it "voice," because I think the word is more suggestive of complexity, implying quality of form and content. I do, however, struggle with making my work "work," and there's no predicting whether this can be achieved calmly or with a ferocious evisceration of the psyche.

An artist's work is a synthesis of much more than the work of other creators.

Underground comics were produced by individuals - they were the auteur variety, rather than the production-line sort of comic book aimed at pleasing a vast general audience. Mainstream comics never appealed to me: they seemed sterile in their stylistic consistency, and were quickly consumed, the stories interesting only for so long as you were reading them.

I'd describe my inner life as constantly vigilant, always ready to flee or respond with violence. I've felt this way since I was a small child. Although it's often quite amusing, it's exhausting at times to live with myself, and when I'm tired and overwhelmed, I do become very depressed. If I'm unable to work for too long, I start questioning my purpose on this earth and whether or not I deserve to live. When I look at other people, I get the sense that they live with themselves much more gracefully.