Alison Bechdel

“People really want to think that these things really happened. I don't know why that important, but I know that when I finish reading a novel or something, I want to know how much of that really happened to this author.”

“But mostly, it's a book about my relationship with my father.”

“Sometimes I wish the writing and drawing were more integrated.”

“That's all true, but there was something else going on for me as a kid, something about my gender identity that I haven't figured out yet. And that's one of the things I'm hoping to dissect and investigate in this memoir project.”

“And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.”

“Well, I'm always working on my comic strip and trying to, you know, keep cranking that out.”

“I never really read superhero stuff as a kid.”

“Grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief.”

“Even drawing gray hair at all is difficult to render in black and white.”

“The satiric ethos of Mad was a much bigger childhood influence.”

“I get a lot of mail from men who really identify with Stuart, you know, Sparrow's boyfriend. I love that. Even though I used to say I wanted men to read the strip even though there weren't any men in it, so they'd be forced to identify with the women.”

“When I grew up, I studied karate for years. I got pretty strong, but eventually I had to acknowledge that I really didn't like fighting at all, so I quit.”

“I hope that I can get people to read it without having to change it. Especially now that the strip has more different kinds of characters. It's really not all lesbians any more.”

“She has given me a way out.”

“Don't you kids get any ideas about dragging a trailer into the backyard. after you graduate from high school, i don't want to see you again.”

“I started to get bored with that stuff about only drawing men and I've taken it out of the slideshow.”

“Nancy Drew was always changing her outfits. I despised girls' clothing, I couldn't wait to get home from school and get out of it. The last thing I wanted to read was minute descriptions of Nancy's frocks.”

“How Horrid" has a slightly facetious tone that strikes me as Wildean. It appears to embrace the actual horror--puberty, public disgrace--then at the last second nimbly sidesteps it, laughing.”

“When I was growing up in the 1960s, there was starting to be more books geared towards young adults.”

“I don't know, maybe it's because I was raised Catholic. Confession has always held a great appeal for me.”