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?

I was unable to sleep and I would stay up and draw these little cartoons. Then a friend showed them around. Before I knew it I was a cartoonist.

In life there are always these things happening if you can just get the joke.

If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.

Love will make a way out of no way.

Cartoonist was the weirdest name I finally let myself have. I would never say it. When I heard it I silently thought, what an awful word.

I started doing cartoons when I was about 21. I never thought I would be a cartoonist. It happened behind my back. I was always a painter and drawer.

The strips are nearly effortless unless I am really emotionally upset, a wreck.

If I had had me for a student I would have thrown me out of class immediately.

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.

If I didn't try to eavesdrop on every bus ride I take or look for the humor when I go for a walk, I would just be depressed all the time.

Race and class are the easiest divisions. It's very stupid.

Going on Letterman is like going off the high dive. It's exhilarating, but after a while it wasn't the kind of thrill I enjoyed.

I go to work the minute I open my eyes.

I need to be cheered up a lot. I think funny people are people who need to be cheered up.

Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time.

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.

I used to live a very social life and never spend much solitary time looking at birds or reading.

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.

Remember how you used to be able to feel your bed breathing and the walls spinning when you were a kid?

People think that whatever I put into strips has happened to me in my life.

I do dumb stuff, like playing my favorite dumb Barry White song and lip-synching into the mirror so it looks like his voice is coming out of my mouth.

I listen like mad to any conversation taking place next to me just trying to hear why this is funny. Women's restrooms are especially great. I wash my hands twice waiting for people to come in and start talking.

I wasn't afraid to be laughed at or be loud.

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?

'Good Times' is a story about the loss of innocence, how adults are responsible for their actions but children aren't.

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.

For horror movies, color is reassuring because, at least in older films, it adds to the fakey-ness.

I am about as detailed as a shadow.

I do love to eavesdrop. It's inspirational, not only for subject matter but for actual dialogue, the way people talk.

I found myself compelled - like this weird, shameful compulsion - to draw cute animals.

I grew up in a house that had a whole lot of trouble. As much trouble as you could imagine.

I live in constant fear of being fired or dropped for that dark part of my work I can't control.

I look crazy. I know I do. Been true since I was a kid!

I remember my comic strips being called 'new wave.' It bugged me.

I run a tight ship, but I try and make it seem like I'm not doing that at all.

I think of images as an immune system and a transit system.

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.

It's not hard for me to be funny in front of people, but most of that is just horrified nerves taking the form of what makes people laugh, and afterwards I'd always feel dreadfully depressed, kind of self-induced bi-polar disorder.

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.

Kids don't plan to play. They don't go: 'Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It's gonna be a three-act.'

My goal on my bucket list is to write a romantic comedy movie.

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.

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.

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.

Remember when you were in school and the teacher would put a picture under an overhead projector so you could see it on the wall? God, I loved that. Tellya the truth, I used to look at that beam of light and think it was God.

Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet.

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.