I came out of UCB and, before that, punk rock, and the whole deal was you do it yourself. Get up and rent the space, get up and press your own records, get up and silkscreen your own tees, get it done yourself. That sort of self-reliance will only serve me. Any time I lose sight of that, my career suffers.

I guess that's the big challenge of any art: Do you want to be something for everyone or everything for someone?

Your kids have these big emotions they can't put into words.

It's really hard to figure out what they need to know. And that's parenting, in general. It's hard to figure out what would benefit your kids and what would just make them needlessly frightened.

I live making comics. Comics is an industrial art but less suffering, because comics are for young people who are more adventurous. I do that. I live off comics, and then I write books, but when you want movies, you cannot make movies without money.

I came from Nebraska, a very middle class family with a progressive father.

We have to be sure we don't pigeonhole one group as though they're not part of the human family, as though there's a different set of rules for them. That would be a big mistake.

My mother told me I was begging her to be an actor when I was four. My father and my grandfather saw at least one or two movies a week; they were film buffs, so I guess it just rubbed off on me. And now it's kind of become a way of life for me.