Quotes from Daniel Clowes

When people get things for free, they tend to not take them as seriously.

I try personally not to be nostalgic.

When I close my eyes to draw I always think Chicago in 1975.

Superman's always chasing after someone who just mugged somebody, and I've never seen that happen in my life.

In some ways, I never outgrew my adolescence. I wake up in the morning and think, 'Oh my God, I'm late for a math test!' But then I say, 'Wait a minute. I'm 40.

That's the biggest part of doing comics: You have to create stuff that makes you want to get out of bed every morning and get to work.

But I enjoy the opportunity to use swear symbols.

I tend to be the type who is overly polite and sort of ingratiating to other people.

It's embarrassing to be involved in the same business as the mainstream comic thing. It's still very embarrassing to tell other adults that I draw comic books - their instant, preconceived notions of what that means.

In a movie, you have to be mindful that no budget is going to be able to deal with running around the globe at every whim of the writer.

You can give some kind of spark of life to a comic that a photograph doesn't really have. A photograph, even if it's connecting with you, it seems very dead on the page sometimes.

People seem to need a likable protagonist more than ever.

Try letting a Kindle protect your heart from sniper fire!

I must have been 3 years old or less, and I remember paging through these comics, trying to figure out the stories. I couldn't read the words, so I made up my own stories.

Working on movies made me realize how fluid the medium of film was.

It's a challenge to express real life in dramatic terms. In an entirely "made-up" story, you are sometimes overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities.

Even if I only had 10 readers, I'd rather do the book for them than for a million readers online.

I'm a fan of parchment and wood pulp.

I think I've had the fantasy of a ray-gun that could erase the world from the time I was a very little kid.

Often I'll do research just to get a time period correct, but I didn't have to for the '70s... I feel like I can close my eyes and still see it so clearly.

I actually start drawing things. Usually they're abandoned before I commit too much time and effort.

I was a very fearful little kid, and I would always see the worst in everything. The glass was half-empty. I would see people kissing, and I would think one was trying to bite the other.

I think that's what we're all most terrified about: that we'll just die and disappear and we'll leave no trace.

I love the medium and I love individual comics, but the business is nothing I would be proud of.