Cartoons are like fruit flies. Biologists use fruit flies because their large chromosomes and short life cycle make them ideal for studying hereditary changes.

People think you get one idea for a cartoon every week, and that's not the way it works. You usually get 10 or 15, and you're - certainly when I was a cartoonist, before I was a cartoon editor, you're rushing to do what is called the batch. When I was doing that, I liked to have, in general, about 10 cartoons.

Humor levels the playing field. I understood that early on - that was something I had.

I have a cartoon where the guy is pretty much, he's a regular-sized guy, but he's the size of the island. He's saying no man is an island, but I come pretty damn close.

I'm very fond of the strictly visual cartoons I did when I was breaking in in the 1970's. Over time I migrated to a more verbal approach.

I've learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Why you would want to look any horse the mouth considering how infrequently they brush is beyond me.

We have to know cognitively what another mind is thinking and also empathically what they're feeling. And of course, in general, that's always the case, but it's often very generic. Like with Leo Cullum's doctor, it's just the fact that people in general are cruel and insensitive. But in the Barbara Smaller cartoon, we understand it's this particular person or this specific sub-class of person and her particular needs and desires, and that's different than a pun cartoon in which it's just semantic.