Daniel Clowes

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.

For example, I noticed that every single kid in the high school in 'The Death-Ray' is based on somebody I went to high school with.

In an art school it's very hard to tell who is the best.

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 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.

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.

When you see somebody who's got a complaining personality, it usually means that they had some vision of what things could be, and they're constantly disappointed by that. I think that would be the camp that I would fall into - constantly horrified by the things people do.

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.

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

I don't read much of anything online.

I'm not opposed to comics on the Internet. It's just not interesting to me.

I'm a fan of parchment and wood pulp.