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.

I'm not at all a linear thinker. I know the feeling I want to convey, but the form is what I struggle to find. I'm sure I'd fail if I tried to write a grant proposal or a book proposal.

The only way to know everything is to learn how to think, how to ask questions, how to navigate the world. Students must learn how to teach themselves to use new tools, how to talk to unfamiliar people, and basically how to be brave.

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.

Oddly enough, I suppose, I don't give much thought to my style, and I don't attempt to be consistent - except within a story. You ask if I struggled to find my style. It seems to me that style - in other words, a way of thinking and doing things - is innate. You can try to will it to be different, but it's like a signature - you can't change its fundamental nature.

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

Most comics are not truly rebellious or creatively free. Most comics, paintings, music, etc., are derivative of other, more successful works. And it's quite often that those without much rebellious spirit are the ones to imitate it. Genuine radical expression is hard to come by, but it usually crops up when money is not a motivating factor. You can take all the liberties you want when someone else's dime is not at stake. The validation is not a threat to comics. A far greater threat to the creative freedom of artists working in any medium is self-consciousness and self-censorship.