The thing I like most about books is that anybody can afford them. They have an innate valuelessness.

I prefer to imagine that my wife, a few friends, and occasionally my mom are the only ones who read what I do, though I realize that this is somewhat unrealistic.

I don't think of myself as an illustrator. I think of myself as a cartoonist. I write the story with pictures - I don't illustrate the story with the pictures.

The thing I don't understand is why so often one hears discussion of the fruits of human labor as if it's all the creation of some alien race.

A book sometimes seems to impose a through-line to life that real life doesn't actually have.

The modern world seems to make fun of people in a lot of ways.

Even the disappointing diffusion of a sheer curtain can suggest the most colorful bouquet of unspeakable secrets.

One of the most valuable things one of my art teachers said to me was, ‘Don’t get upset by criticism. Value the fact that at least someone noticed what you did.

I believe that the development of language - of naming, categorization, conceptualization - destroys our ability to see as we age.

Comics, at least in periodical form, exist almost entirely free of any pretense; the critical world of art hardly touches them, and they're 100% personal.

Mostly, I was only interested in television as a kid, and the majority of reading material I collected was an adjunct to that central concern, comic books and magazines included.

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.

Eve left Adam, to meet the Devil in private.

How did I know you ran a 4:30 mile in high school? That's easy. Everyone ran a 4:30 mile in high school.

So I do not consider myself a chronicler of my fatherland or even a chronicler of Havana

I don't really care what someone's background is; creativity can come from any background.

I am essentially an amateur medecin, and this to me is almost a mania.

As far as I can remember, every dime I ever had went to something extravagant. I would rather spend more, buy fewer items and have them forever.

I think Nature's imagination is so much greater than man's, she's never gonna let us relax!

Nicholas Sparks recently went on record as saying he is a greater novelist than Cormac McCarthy. This is true in the same sense that I am a better novelist than William Shakespeare.