I had no television when I was little, just a stack of old, beat-up comics from the 1950s and 1960s.
Daniel Clowes
When I close my eyes to draw I always think Chicago in 1975.
Comics seldom move me the way I would be moved by a novel or movie.
When you see somebody who's got a complaining personality, it usually means that they had some vision of what things could be, and they're constantly disappointed by that. I think that would be the camp that I would fall into - constantly horrified by the things people do.
That's the biggest part of doing comics: You have to create stuff that makes you want to get out of bed every morning and get to work.
In an art school it's very hard to tell who is the best.
I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book publishing.
It's embarrassing to be involved in the same business as the mainstream comic thing. It's still very embarrassing to tell other adults that I draw comic books - their instant, preconceived notions of what that means.
I was a very fearful little kid, and I would always see the worst in everything. The glass was half-empty. I would see people kissing, and I would think one was trying to bite the other.
I must have been 3 years old or less, and I remember paging through these comics, trying to figure out the stories. I couldn't read the words, so I made up my own stories.
I have this certain vision of the way I want my comics to look; this sort of photographic realism, but with a certain abstraction that comics can give. It's kind of a fine line.
You can give some kind of spark of life to a comic that a photograph doesn't really have. A photograph, even if it's connecting with you, it seems very dead on the page sometimes.
I love the medium and I love individual comics, but the business is nothing I would be proud of.
I don't read much of anything online.
I'm not opposed to comics on the Internet. It's just not interesting to me.
I'm a fan of parchment and wood pulp.
Working on movies made me realize how fluid the medium of film was.
For example, I noticed that every single kid in the high school in 'The Death-Ray' is based on somebody I went to high school with.
I think I've had the fantasy of a ray-gun that could erase the world from the time I was a very little kid.
I think that's what we're all most terrified about: that we'll just die and disappear and we'll leave no trace.
People seem to need a likable protagonist more than ever.
I'm more interested in characters who are a little difficult.
I was 30 before I made a living that was not embarrassing.
For me, the whole process involves envisioning this book in my head as I'm working.
Even if I only had 10 readers, I'd rather do the book for them than for a million readers online.
I originally just wanted to be an artist.
Superman's always chasing after someone who just mugged somebody, and I've never seen that happen in my life.
That'll be my claim to fame: My grandmother-in-law is the oldest iPad user!
But I enjoy the opportunity to use swear symbols.
When people get things for free, they tend to not take them as seriously.
I never feel there's anything I can't do.
I tend to be the type who is overly polite and sort of ingratiating to other people.
Yeah, I don't necessarily like endings that contrive an artificial moment of completion.
Nobody else feels the same way about your dog that you do.
I try personally not to be nostalgic.
In a movie, you have to be mindful that no budget is going to be able to deal with running around the globe at every whim of the writer.
Try letting a Kindle protect your heart from sniper fire!
