What was a very private childhood hobby turned into a very a public, professional job, and I think that there's a lot of inhibition that can grow from that.

My responsibility is to present things in a way that is realistic and true to the multifaceted world I've known... This is how I think the world is, not how it should be.

The story entitled 'Good-Bye' is probably Tatsumi's most well-known work, and I think it's a good representation of many of Tatsumi's skills and stylistic tendencies.

I had a mundane, happy childhood, without much struggle.

My early comics are really reflective of being kind of a befuddled, single loser in the Bay Area, and I think having kids has been by far the most profound impact on me as a person and as an artist.

I think that artists, at a certain point, can either become defiant and say that the audience is wrong, readers don't get them, and they're going to keep doing it their own way, or they can listen to the criticism - and not necessarily blindly follow the audience's requests and advice.