Quotes from Joe Sacco

It's a visual world and people respond to visuals.

I will interview bigwigs if I get the chance, but you are seldom surprised by people in power - you've got to get awfully damn close to get anything new.

I try to ask visual questions. I'll ask what someone was wearing, if that seems relevant. If possible, I'll walk over the same ground that they're depicting. Of course, I can never get it precisely as it was.

I'd much rather hang out in a cafe. That's where things are really happening.

I think any journalist who spends time in a place realizes that there are lots of stories around beyond their primary story. You meet so many interesting people and have all kinds of experiences.

There's probably one more story about Bosnia that I'd like to do, because I spent a fair amount of time on the Serb side of the lines, which isn't apparent in the other books.

What becomes of someone who thinks he has all the power... and what becomes of someone who believes he has none?

Some of the world's blackest holes are out in the open for anyone to see....

I chiefly concern myself with those who seldom get a hearing, & I don't feel it is incumbent on me to balance their voices with the well-crafted apologetics of the powerful. The powerful are generally excellently served by the mainstream media or propaganda organs. The powerful should be quoted, yes, but to measure their pronouncements against the truth, not to obscure it.

A boy standing in the rain, and what is he thinking?

Make no mistake, everywhere you go, not just in Marvel Comics, there's parallel universes...Here? On the surface streets: traffic, couples in love, falafel-to-go, tourists in jogging suits licking stamps for postcards... And over the wall behind closed doors: other things-people strapped to chairs, sleep deprivation, the smell of piss...other things happening for "reasons of national security

Americans care more about the rights of animals than about what happens to us!

A journalist who says, 'Well, I pissed off both sides--I must be doing something right,' is probably fooling himself and, worse, he may be fooling the reader. Balance should not be a smokescreen for laziness.

The journalist must strive to find out what is going on and tell it, not neuter the truth in the name of equal time.

I think I'm generally a good listener anyway.

I'm not a good tourist, I don't like tourism.

It became clear to me that I had to push it toward a more representational way of drawing.

When I was there, something clicked in my head; I found myself interviewing people, searching out facts and figures. Later on I became much more self-conscious of what I was doing.

I don't often go to a place just to check out all the cultural sites of a city.

And, in some ways I like traveling, in other ways I'm sort of fed up by the whole notion.

I don't like just traveling in for a short time. I've done that before, because sometimes you work for magazines and they have a budget, and if you're working for them, they want something by a certain time.

My guide had a copy of Palestine on my last trip to Gaza. He'd bring it out and show people what I was trying to do. That usually went over pretty well.

With comics you can put interesting and solid information in a format that's pretty palatable.

When I went to Bosnia, I was there to tell someone else's story and I was more methodical.