When you put something out there into the world there's all these words you don't want to hear that you hope people don't say. I don't like anything that starts with 're' - like retro reinvent recreate - I hate that. It's always like living in the past - copying emulating.

I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it.

I have tried to keep on with my striving because this is the only hope I have of ever achieving anything worthwhile and lasting.

One of the biggest challenges in my job is letting go of the movie once you go home at night and knowing you can't do anything to your performance once you've laid it on film.

About 15 years ago I went though a period of a year or so when I just couldn't find anything good. My wife noticed I was having trouble reading menus. I bought some cheap reading glasses in a drug store. I got home and suddenly all these books that weren't good were good.

I was from such a large family that when I first met my wife I told her: 'You can go work outside of the house and I'll stay home and continue making my cartoon strips. Maybe I'll make some commercials nearby you know I'll do anything locally but I would love to just stay at home and raise the kids like I did when I was growing up.'

I think the advent of the Internet gave us all a big boost because by the time the Internet became mainstream and you could get it in your home a lot of us were used to dealing in fan culture writing to magazines or anything at the back of comic books.

When I was at college I worked in a department store called Brit Home Stores which is a pretty lackluster department store selling clothes for middle-aged women. My job was to walk the floor and find anything that was damaged take it to the store room and log it.

Every woman I've had a relationship with has found this maddening the fact that I will talk about anything on the stage and reveal all this stuff and yet when I'm at home I clam up and won't discuss anything intimate or personal.

I grew up in a home environment where I wasn't getting esteem for anything I did.