David Rees quotes:

Once you use a toothbrush to clean a pencil sharpener, you should no longer use it to clean your teeth.

I don't like when performers rag on their ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend in absentia. If they're not there, it just feels rude... I'm never going to say anything personal about myself on stage. That's my new goal.

It would be amazing to tell my grandchildren, like, 'Yeah, I was paid to sharpen 1,000 pencils.'

I don't even drink Coke. It tastes like robot sweat.

I don't think I would've ever dared dreaming of becoming a professional cartoonist. I wouldn't set myself up for that disappointment.

People think, "Wow, people in America have so much money, they're sending hundreds of pencils to this guy." I don't think those people realize that most people who are buying these pencils are buying them as art objects or conversation pieces.

To me, if you're lucky enough to make stuff that people will pay money for, do a good job. Really do a good job. Especially if you're talking about real stuff, like terror atrocities and human rights abuses and pencil-sharpening techniques.

I was just worried that someone was gonna think that I had been commissioned by Jamba Juice to make cartoons about Jamba Juice. And the big thing for me was - if I'm not getting paid to sell out, I don't want people to think that I'm selling out.

I didn't dare to dream of making money. But now of course, I've made many thousands of dollars sharpening pencils.

I never thought I would make a living as a pencil-sharpener. The first goal was: I don't want to lose money. And then the goal was: I want to see if 100 people buy my pencils. I just kept upping the benchmarks.

I hardly ever use pencils. I'm left-handed and it's really messy if you're left-handed because of the graphite smudging. I use them more now than I used to because there's, like, 15,000 pencils all over my house.

Just because something makes you smile or laugh ... doesn't mean it's a joke.

I hate self-publishing; it's a real drag and it takes up a lot of space.

The things I'm grateful for are: I had the one thing that I feel really lucky about, which is that I made something, I made art, that truly - in a weird way - truly comforted me and comforted a lot of people. And I'm really grateful that I got to have that experience.

Nobody could be a professional cartoonist, because you have to do something you don't like to do in order to be a responsible adult and pay the rent.

I've been really surprised about a lot of the negative comments about artisanal pencil sharpening. Like, it really rubs some people the wrong way.

I'd always been really intimidated by prose writing.

I have very limited craftsmanship. And a lot of the stuff I make plays on that.

I got to draw shapes. I really like to draw funky, geometric shapes. And I got to use just different fonts and make a joke of how feminine it was, but it didn't even have people in it. To me, it was so exciting and interesting to do that for a while.

The thing that was interesting to me about Relationshapes - as opposed to most of the other cartoons I've ever made - was I knew when one worked and when one didn't work, but I couldn't really explain it.

The type of pop culture that is honestly very moving and powerful to me is [when artists] do their homework. They make it real.

I take pop culture really seriously, I think it's really important, and the stuff that I make...I don't want it to be insubstantial, even if it's about something wacky, like sharpening pencils. I feel like I owe it to myself and I owe it to people who are really interested in pencils and I owe it to anybody to do my due diligence and give them something real.

The time that I would spend revisiting my old Get Your War On strips is more profitably spent Googling myself and reading comments about how people hate my pencil-sharpening business.

I don't want to be one of these people who's like, "Man, I don't know where my ideas come from and I don't know why this works."

I feel like really thinking about art and really appreciating it and learning the language of it just makes you more of a connoisseur. I believe that.

I have a really analytical approach to art. And the whole idea that you can't analyze what makes a joke funny...I do not agree with that at all.

The thing I hear about a lot is when people over-sharpen their pencil with a single-blade pocket-sharpener and then when they put the pencil to the page, their tip breaks and pencil points always break irregularly. It always gets all jagged and you have to refresh the point. That's a common complaint.

I talked to people in the pencil industry and I talked to people as I was sharpening their pencils about the frustrations they have with pencils, so I really did do my research and I do know more about pencils than most people.

I just wanted a really simple, dramatic way so that fans, people who were reading my comic, would be like, "This is something different." Just to flag it, almost.

Obviously, I never had to sketch anything out. To me, that was the appeal of working with clip art, working digitally. You make it and it's done.

I would make a comic for Rolling Stone every two weeks, because they're biweekly. And then I would make weekly comics for my weekly papers. It was on two parallel tracks. And then they all got collected in a book.

Any working cartoonist will tell you this, anybody who's working in a creative field: at some point, it's a job. You have deadlines. I think, for over a year, I refused to make them for publications, because I only wanted to make them when I wanted to make them. But at some point, I was like, "This is crazy, you have an opportunity to be a professional cartoonist.

I've never been good at self-promotion. And my URL is really obscure. And for years and years, there was nothing about me on my website.

I've always liked Richard Pryor. I've always responded to rhythmic profanity.

Talking about my personal life onstage, I've realized I'm not one of those comics who can do that. I can allude to it but I don't want to be a confessional performer...

I had good relationships with stores. And I was like, "All right, I'll self-publish it. But I'm only going to do 1,000."

The way you make money is to do something you don't like to do. And that's how you know you're a virtuous person.

I felt really conflicted about making money off stuff that's creatively satisfying.

I started sharpening pencils at the census and how that was a difficult time in my life because my marriage was ending and I had quit cartooning and I didn't know what to do with myself.

Everyone has pencils in their house, no matter how hip and contemporary they are.

I assumed that the pencil market was collapsing, but then it turns out that from 2010 to 2011 in the United States, pencil consumption went up by over six percent. I mean, those are all foreign-made pencils. Those are probably Chinese pencils, mostly, and Mexican pencils. I mean, it is an archaic communication technology, but it is still ubiquitous.

I liked sharpening pencils and I was like, "Oh, I wonder if I could get paid to do it." And I figured it out and I did it.

I wanted to get paid to sharpen pencils originally just because I thought it would be fun.

I like feeling like I'm discovering something new. That's really a special feeling and also, you don't have it that often. At least, I don't. Maybe I'm not creative enough.

I like to do things that are new, where I feel the sense of discovery.

I'm interested in the structure of art and how it works. And the content is also interesting, but I don't want to keep the same structure and just plug in new content every week.

I'm not a professional comedian. Nobody comes to my comedy shows. That's just a little hobby.