The strips are nearly effortless unless I am really emotionally upset, a wreck.
Remember how you used to be able to feel your bed breathing and the walls spinning when you were a kid?
There was a beautiful time in the beginning when I just did it and didn't analyze the consequences, but I think that time ends in everyone's work.
Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time.
Race and class are the easiest divisions. It's very stupid.
I used to live a very social life and never spend much solitary time looking at birds or reading.
I grew up in a house that had a whole lot of trouble. As much trouble as you could imagine.
My goal on my bucket list is to write a romantic comedy movie.
I remember my comic strips being called 'new wave.' It bugged me.
I look crazy. I know I do. Been true since I was a kid!
It's one thing to have a relationship, to lay your hands on it, and another to make it continue and last. That's something I haven't talked about much in my comic strips, and it's certainly something I'm interested in.
Part of a horror movie has to be a bit fakey for me to really enjoy it. The new ones are so realistic that they distract me from the ride through the horror.
For horror movies, color is reassuring because, at least in older films, it adds to the fakey-ness.
Kids don't plan to play. They don't go: 'Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It's gonna be a three-act.'
I think of images as an immune system and a transit system.
For 'Picture This,' I wanted it to be a drawing book that didn't have any instructions about drawing, beyond the real simple stuff you'd find like in a Bazooka bubblegum wrapper, or in 'Highlights' magazine. I just wanted it to be feelings about looking and seeing and pictures.
When I work on a book, I usually start with a question. And I don't sit around and go 'I need to write a book. What's a good question?' It will be a question that's just clanging around in my head. So for 'What It Is,' it was this idea of 'What is an image?'
It's much easier to teach writing, because people are less shy about writing. If they're in a group, nobody can see what they're writing. When you're drawing, people get a little more nervous.
In my writing class, we never, ever talk about the writing - ever. We never address a story that's been read. I also won't let anyone look at the person who's reading. No eye contact; everybody has to draw a spiral. And I would like to do a drawing class where we could talk about anything except for the drawing. No one could even mention it.
The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock.
