“I was born Moishe Ketzelbourd but the Indians call me Maurice Cougar.”

I think both of those things should be running at full blast, not less of both so it becomes an easier thing. I think it should be twice as dense. That’s just what interests me.

I think Jewish history did away with a priesthood when the Temple was destroyed, and it became, supposedly, a religion of scholars. A rabbi is just a scholar.

I think architectural appreciation would be a minor occupation after a nuclear war. People would just be happy to have something to eat.

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.

The click [of a light switch] is the modern triumphal clarion proceeding us through life, announcing our entry into every lightless room.

Really interesting novels, they always are so demanding of you on some level that you don’t fall asleep.

You know how misleading an image is. You see an image in the newspaper, if they left the caption off, good luck knowing what’s going on. There is something inherently misleading about images, so they need annotation.

A picture story just doesn’t run like a film. It doesn’t have 24 frames per second. It doesn’t deal with this illusion of movement. It’s more like if you did an illuminated novel.

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

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’ve wasted the last five years of my life dealing in religious articles. People today find spiritual solace in ballroom dancing.

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.

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

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

How can you think that that will evoke the past? It doesn’t even have to evoke anything, but anyway, it’s how we’re living. It’s this moment where nobody has to immediately think too much about how things are being documented. It’s a great time.

Certain movies that are trying to evoke history are just like being in an antique store, and all you notice is that all the stuff has been gathered together, and it feels like a pile of antiques.