“Irony can elude the genius among us, sometimes.”

The fan letters were mostly answered by professional people that’d done them for a living. And I didn’t have any daily connection with their response to my work. I didn’t have a relationship with my audience. And every artist should have it.

I happen to think nearly everybody – especially those one might find in the odd issue of ‘People’ magazine, including me – is frightfully boring, especially me. And Tom Cruise. Tom and I are alike in only this way.

I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I’d bet I wouldn’t lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste.

It was a huge challenge to learn digital painting well enough so that computers don’t pop into mind when one sees one.

Some of us find our lives abridged even before the paperback comes out.

It’s not terribly dignified to have anyone seeing one laugh at one’s own material.

Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he’s a professional whiner in the newspaper.

Dear Lord, I’ve been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us…

That’s the conundrum of cartoon stripping, as opposed to political cartoons. When your anger is the driving force of your drawing hand, failure follows. The anger is OK, but it has to serve the interests of the heart, frankly.

The digital world has allowed me a connection with my reader that I’d never had before. I didn’t meet the people who read my material.

I knew ‘Mars Needs Moms! ‘ would be a movie seconds after the title came to mind. Similarly, I also knew that my daughter would be calling me a dork as a default term of endearment eventually.

Keep in mind that in 1985, I had a potential readership of over 50 million Americans. At that time, a good portion of those were under 30.

I can say that even in the midst of my most cynical comic stripping: Opus shone through with a bit of heart, anchoring the ugly proceedings with a comforting pull of emotion.

I ignore Hallmark Holidays. And this comes from a guy who has sold a million Opus greeting cards.

A turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird… a social being… capable of actual affection… nuzzling its young with almost human- like compassion. Anyway, it’s dead and we’re gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family.

I paint digitally now. A pity, in some ways, as the biggest price one pays is that you no longer have a finished piece of physical art to hang on a wall. I miss that terribly.

If wisdom in government eludes us, perhaps courage could substitute-the moral courage to terminate mistakes.

Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.