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

There's something exciting about weekly strips in that you're following the way the story reveals itself to the writer week by week. All the possible directions it could have taken are there; it's a kind of participatory reading that I think books discourage.

I hate Calvin and Hobbes. I think its a big re-hash of formula kid strips.

If you're from a certain generation, you basically learn to read with 'Peanuts.' It's sort of the template for the modern strip. Its influence ceased to be noticed because it's in everything.

For me, the very last great strip is 'Peanuts.' After 'Peanuts,' there are a very few strips that I enjoyed for different reasons, but I don't think they were great. I don't think anything's come along since Charles Schulz - and I mean since 1950 - that I think rises above the professional or the eccentric into that realm of greatness.

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.

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

I loved to read, and I think any child who loves to read will read anything, including the back of the cereal box, which I did every morning.

I never felt ostracized or made to feel strange by obsessing over 'The Onion' or 'Calvin and Hobbes.' That was considered completely normal.

Comic-strip stuff isn't really my cup of tea, really.