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I was influenced by autobiographical writers like Henry Miller, and I had actually done some autobiographical prose. But I just thought that comics were like virgin territory. There was so much to be done. It excited me. I couldn't draw very well. I could write scripts and storyboard style using stick figures and balloons and captions.

I was sort of on a mission with 'American Splendor.' I wanted to try to prove that comics could do things. I wanted to expand them beyond superheroes and talking animals. And I knew that was going to take a long time. But I just started writing an autobiography about my quotidian life.

My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.

I'm a storyteller. I'm not like any other comic. I tell detailed stories - not made-up stuff, but true stories.

Writing this book feels like a completely different activity from writing my comic strip because it's about real life. I feel like I'm using a part of my brain that's been dormant until now.

I'm a big illustration and comic book fan. In my eyes, comic books and illustration are the same kind of art forms.

My work was entirely nonfiction.

I had been working on this series called 'Everything Dies,' and it was basically me doing non-fiction essays, responding to religion and stuff like that, and I really got into this ideas of telling factual stories via comics.

I've wanted to write comics ever since I figured out it was a job.

I've always published a range of responses to my work in the letters section of my comic book.