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Early in my publishing career, someone told me I'd need to have five books in print before I could quit my job as a journalist. Turns out it was closer to 10 books. It also turns out that while it's great to see my titles on bookstore shelves, my best customers are schools and libraries.

The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial.

I seem to only write New York stories because it's the only thing that inspires or interests me.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

I don't know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

Publication in 'The New Yorker' meant everything, and it's no exaggeration to say that it changed my life.

Most of my work - including everything from my own comics to the covers I've drawn for 'The New Yorker' - is the result of taking some personal experience or observation and then fictionalizing it to a degree.

I did about 2000 covers altogether, for all sorts of books - from Shakespeare to James Bond - and I always had the idea that I must give 100%, no matter who the author was.