The most popular cartoon of mine is a guy on the phone looking at his appointment book and saying "No, Thursday's out. How about never, is never good for you?"

I know everybody wants humor to be subversive and speak truth to power. I don't think power's been listening, incidentally.

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.

There's all kinds of theories among the cartoonists: start with funniest, end with funniest.

Each cartoon needs the right amount of wrong.

Humor is basically a cognitive process. And it's a creative process not only on the part of the cartoonist but on the part of the viewer.

There's usually nothing in a guy's joke in which we have to understand what's going on in someone else's mind.