Ben Katchor

I live in an apartment building built in 1925, and it hasn't been heavily renovated, so I feel very much connected to that time and what went on in that place. ”

I always lived in old buildings, and I thought about who lived here before. You'd have to be oblivious not to. ”

You can have your own watch and always doubt it. If I had a watch I'd probably always be doubting it or the batteries would be dying. I just know that people always have trouble with their watches, and that's why I like public clocks. ”

I never wore a watch. I always depend on public clocks, and stores have clocks, but that is strange. ”

I remember as a child going to an exhibit about the Soviet Union, and every paper had this alien smell. The paper and the ink were all exported. It was like a piece of cheese from that country, you could touch it, feel it, smell it, and it was different. ”

I'm very interested in music and where these sounds of Western music come from. ”

As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn't know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics. ”

In America, there's a very long tradition of a comic strip that comes in newspapers, which is not true all over the world. To sell papers, they put color comics in. ”