I don't like cartoons that take place in Nowhereville. I like cartoons where I know where they're happening.
I don't like anything that looks gelatinous - really weirds me out. But when I was a kid, I used to get very, very upset if anything had a kind of chalky texture; like, certain kinds of cottage cheese I know have a weird chalkiness.
I don't like holidays. And I don't like crowds of people. I don't like noise.
It's like a 'chicken or the egg' thing. We're all part of the culture. We're reflecting it; we're changing it. So, yeah, I think culture is always changing.
I think of my drawing style like handwriting: it's a mix of whatever handwriting you're born with, plus bits and pieces you've pilfered from other people around you.
My parents were very, very close; they pretty much grew up together. They were born in 1912. They were each other's only boyfriend and girlfriend. They were - to use a contemporary term I hate - co-dependent, and they had me very late. So they had their way of doing things, and they reinforced each other.
I think, with my cartoons, the parent-like figures are kind of my own archeypes of parents, and they're taken a little bit from my parents and other people's parents, and parents I have read about, and parents I dreamed about, and parents that I made up.
I don't think any of my kids' books talk down to kids.
I've done a lot of death cartoons - tombstones, Grim Reaper, illness, obituaries... I'm not great at analyzing things, but my guess is that maybe the only relief from the terror of being alive is jokes.
I sometimes suffer from insomnia. And when I can't fall asleep, I play what I call the alphabet game.
I used to think of the cartoons as a magazine within a magazine. First you go through and read all the cartoons, and then you go back and read the articles.
I can't even look at daily comic strips. And I hate sitcoms because they don't seem like real people to me: they're props that often say horrible things to each other, which I don't find funny. I have to feel like they're real people.
I don't put myself through that nauseating experience of looking at someone's face while they go through your stuff. Ugh! It's just horrible! It gives me the cringes to even think about it.
It was deeply interesting to observe my mother closely and to draw her. During those last months, she wasn't speaking much, if at all, and it was a way for me to be with her. It felt very natural.
I'm sure that my parents' behavior has entered my work, I'm sorry to say. I don't think you need to have a difficult childhood to be funny, but it helps.
There's something about most phobias where there's a tiny, tiny corner where you think this really actually could happen.
Grime is not like messiness or some fingerprints on a cabinet; it takes a long time to accumulate.
I just really love the cartoon form. I love the plasticity of it.
My works were not - and they still aren't - single panel gags with a punch line underneath them. I like a lot of those cartoons; I just don't draw them.
I had to get good grades and do well in school - my mother was an assistant principal and my father was a teacher - and they took this very seriously.
