We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay.
I am about as detailed as a shadow.
If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.
I am not sure how much I would like being married if I wasn't married to him. A man who likes flea markets and isn't gay? I knew I was lucky.
The happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad it's there. The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, your kingdom isn't dead.
The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry.
I tried to be like the richer kids as much as I could because I wanted to live on their streets, at least hang out on their streets and eat their amazing food and walk barefoot on their shag carpets. I became something of a pest in that way, and in general, other people's parents didn't like me.
I live in constant fear of being fired or dropped for that dark part of my work I can't control.
I do love to eavesdrop. It's inspirational, not only for subject matter but for actual dialogue, the way people talk.
I run a tight ship, but I try and make it seem like I'm not doing that at all.
People think that whatever I put into strips has happened to me in my life.
I've gotten a lot of livid letters about the awfulness of my work. I've never known what to make of it. Why do people bother to write if they hate what I do?
Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet.
I believe a kid who is playing is not alone. There is something brought alive during play, and this something, when played with, seems to play back.
When I was working on 'Freddie,' I had been trying to write it on a computer for many, many years, but that delete button just won't let anything go forward.
My mom didn't want me to go to college. She didn't want me to read - when I read, I may as well have been holding a pineapple.
Playing and fun are not the same thing, though when we grow up we may forget that and find ourselves mixing up playing with happiness. There can be a kind of amnesia about the seriousness of playing, especially when we played by ourselves.
The minute you understand racism, you're responsible for being racist. It's like eating from the tree of knowledge.
I found myself compelled - like this weird, shameful compulsion - to draw cute animals.
'What It Is' was based on this class I've been teaching for 10 years - I wanted to write a book about writing that didn't mention stuff like story structure, protagonists, and all those things that we know about only because they already exist in stories.
