GREGORY GALLANT

I don't think it's a coincidence that comic books appeal so strongly to children. Not that it negates any of their power for adults, but there is something about comics that makes them a perfect storytelling system for children.

For me, the very last great strip is 'Peanuts.' After 'Peanuts,' there are a very few strips that I enjoyed for different reasons, but I don't think they were great. I don't think anything's come along since Charles Schulz - and I mean since 1950 - that I think rises above the professional or the eccentric into that realm of greatness.

I came to the big city and I started to get involved in the punk scene and stuff, and I wanted to sort of brand myself. I made a pretty conscious effort to be a different type of person.

When I started out in the eighties, the idea of creating serious comics for adults was pretty laughable to most folks, and for the longest time it was hard to even explain what alternative comics or graphic novels were. Nobody seemed to understand or care. Not so, any longer.

I've certainly seen a lot of my cartoonist friends embrace 'Little Lulu' in a much deeper way because their kids love it so much. But that's not gonna be happening for me. There are no kids coming.

As I get older and I see all my friends starting to have children, I see them have different reactions to the material that was probably not of great interest to them when they were younger, because they're re-experiencing it through their kids.

I think obviously there's a core of who you are, and as you get older, you become more aware of what behavior is immutable. For a long time, I felt there was a deep separation between the person I was as a teenager and the person I was in my 20s and early 30s .

Comics are given serious attention now and I'm quite surprised. You see them reviewed in major newspapers and exhibited in serious museums. I wouldn't have predicted it.

You look at most artists, the arc of their career, there's a definite decline at the end. And that decline could set in at any time. In your 50s, or your 60s and 70s if you're lucky. Time goes by fast, and you've got to be busy all the time.

Consciousness is, among other things, a spontaneous exercise in creativity.

You will not understand your part within the framework of nature until you actually see yourselves in danger of tearing it apart.

Forget the cringing selves you sometimes are and remember, instead, the magic essence of your own being that sings even now through your fingertips. That is the reality which you are seeking. Experience it fully.

When you do not know what to do, relax and tell yourself that other portions of yourself do know; they will take over. Give yourself some rest. Remind yourself that in many ways you are a very successful person as you are. Success does not necessarily involve great intellect or great position or great wealth; it has to do with inner integrity. Remember that.

The world of comic book collecting is not a pretty place. For a bunch of guys who like good-over-evil stories, you sure meet a lot of morally bankrupt assholes.

You get what you concentrate upon. There is no other main rule.

You are meant to understand the nature of your inner self, and to manifest it outward.

The past existed in multitudinous ways. You only experienced one probable past. By changing this past in your mind, now, in your present, you can change not only its nature but its effect, and not only upon yourself but upon others.

In the next life you will be working with those attitudes that are now yours.

The basic idea of karma is not punishment. Karma presents the opportunity for development; to make use of opportunities that were not taken advantage of, to fill in gaps of ignorance, to enlarge understanding through experience, to do what should be done.

I believe that all creativity and consciousness is born in the quality of play, as opposed to work, in the quickened intuitional spontaneity that I see as a constant through all my own existences, and in the experience of those I know.

People claim that love is the deepest feeling, but don't you believe it. Loneliness is the most affecting of human emotions. Nothing makes life more vivid. If you wish to live in the moment, I recommend intense loneliness.

A generation that hates war will not bring peace. A generation that loves peace will bring peace.

Consciousness is, among other things, a spontaneous exercise in creativity. You are learning now, in a three-dimensional context, the ways in which your emotional and psychic existence can create varieties of physical form. You manipulate within the psychic environment, and these manipulations are then automatically impressed upon the physical mold.

On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough.