I decided I was going to tell these stories. I went around and met Crumb. He was the cartoonist. I started realizing comics weren't just kid stuff.

Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.

I'm sure someone out there has a workable solution. But what do I know? I make comic books and write about jazz. I do know the difference between right and wrong, though.

I met Robert Crumb in 1962; he lived in Cleveland for a while. I took a look at his stuff. Crumb was doing stuff beyond what other writers and artists were doing. It was a step beyond Mad.

I'd been familiar with comics, and I'd collected 'em when I was a kid, but after I got into junior high school, there wasn't much I was interested in

I really don't have a lot in common with the people who attend the Comic Con. It's like assuming that all people who write prose are the same.

Comics are words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.

Since about 1980 Kenny Werner has been one of jazz’s unsung heroes

I think that the so-called average person often exhibits a great deal of heroism in getting through an ordinary day . . .

Am I a guy who writes about himself in a comic book, or am I just a character in that book? If I die, will that character keep going, or will he just fade away?

Life is about women, gigs, an' bein' creative.

Have the nature of a dervish: then wear a stylish cap.

Man is not going to wait passively for millions of years before evolution offers him a better brain.

Is it bad to like the way the scars look on my skin? Oh, the way they feel under my hands. My body’s protecting itself, saying, “No, this barrier of scar tissue is to keep you out.

The Lord has called me to obedience, though not always to success.

I had moments of my actions and words not reflecting who it is I am - if that defines a punk, then yes, absolutely.

One of the things I learned, the easiest of lessons, was that the better you do your job, often going against conventional mores, the less popular you are likely to be.

This is the land of dreamings, a land of wide horizons and secret places. The first people, our ancestors, created this country in the culture that binds us to it.

Pot enables you to think clearly without any fear or any limits. It's a mind-expander, which is part of why it's illegal and why drugs like Vicodin are legal.

The more hedonistic you were, the better...I very much subscribed to that as a young artist.

Bill Clinton is the guy that said, "The era of Big Government is over." Whether or not he meant it or not, he said it.