Cartoonist

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

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.

When you learn about stories in school, you get it backward. You start to think 'Oh, the reason these things are in stories is because a book said I need to put these things in there.' You need a death, as my husband says, and you need a little sidekick with a saying like 'Skivel-dee-doo!'

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.

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

Love will make a way out of no way.

I am about as detailed as a shadow.

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

The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry.

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

The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock.

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

We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay.

'What It Is' was based on this class I've been teaching for 10 years - I wanted to write a book about writing that didn't mention stuff like story structure, protagonists, and all those things that we know about only because they already exist in stories.

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 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.

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

It's much easier to teach writing, because people are less shy about writing. If they're in a group, nobody can see what they're writing. When you're drawing, people get a little more nervous.