Alison Bechdel

Autobiographical comics, I love them. I love them. ”

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. ”

The satiric ethos of Mad was a much bigger childhood influence. ”

Well, I'm always working on my comic strip and trying to, you know, keep cranking that out. ”

It's definitely part of it, that the men were having fun and doing the interesting things but also, I don't know, I'm just thinking more about gender and how maybe in some way I am more of a boy than a girl. ”

Watching everyone root through their psyche, it just delights me. Especially R. Crumb's stuff. ”

That's all true, but there was something else going on for me as a kid, something about my gender identity that I haven't figured out yet. And that's one of the things I'm hoping to dissect and investigate in this memoir project. ”

I hope that I can get people to read it without having to change it. Especially now that the strip has more different kinds of characters. It's really not all lesbians any more. ”

I just met someone who read Gone With the Wind 62 times for exactly that same reason. She couldn't bear that it wasn't real. She wanted to live in it. ”

It's a hard thing to age a character because you can't really suddenly give someone gray hair. ”