My aesthetic sense was formed at a young age by what surrounded me: the narrow residential spaces of Japan and the mental escapes from those spaces that took the forms of manga and anime.

I've been immersed in manga since I was a kid. I grew up with this culture. So I started to think about how to compare manga to contemporary art.

Rather than a big figure, I guess you could say I'm more of an influential minority symbol.

I'm very sad to be compared with Warhol and The Factory, because I have no drugs, you know. We have no drug culture in Japan! Maybe it's because our attitude toward labor is totally different.

The way I formed my studio and how I organize things actually came out of the model of the Japanese animation studio and the manga industry. The manga industry is gigantic in Japan.

New York City is still the art capital - every time I'm in New York, I'm thinking about competition.

Like many other kids, I liked watching anime.

I'm always very interested in breeding. Raising cacti is breeding. My lotus plant collection is breeding. The insects are breeding.

Children are born with a desire to have meaning. Give them Jesus, and they will have it eternally.

What at one time one refuses to see never vanishes but returns, again and again, in many forms.

The world makes, and hates, bachelors.

If you really believe in what you're doing, work hard, take nothing personally and if something blocks one route, find another. Never give up.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

I hate a cramp, he thought. It is a treachery of one's own body.

Call on your Lord when your heart is brittle, that is a time when it's in pieces and the Light of Allah can fill the gaps. That is why Allāh is with the broken hearted.

One of the greatest opportunities to live our values-or betray them-lies in the food we put on our plates.

The only way to be who you want to be is by being what you haven't yet been.

Religion, morality, and knowledge are necessary for good government... Therefore schools and the means of educating the people should always be encouraged.