Jhonen Vasquez quotes:

At this very moment I'm behind on a compilation that Slave Labor is doing for Free Comic Book Day.

I like not being dead. Anything beyond that is just icing on the cake.My undead cake of livingness.

I love zombies. I don't know how else to answer that... I have trouble falling asleep, so there are certain scenarios I use in my head to relax. I find sniping zombies very relaxing.

I'm definitely incredibly attracted to the aesthetic of what is typically deemed goth stuff, but. A lot of my experience growing up was in being around that kind of thing, and it's just what sinks into a person's brain.

Goth culture, as mired in the past as it is, even it goes through changes, so Goth when I was growing up is not what it is now. When I think of Goth culture as it is at the moment I think of mall culture.

I don't particularly dislike any kind of person that might be reading my stuff. They like it and that's cool, but I don't do the work for any kind of group in particular, except for hobos, who just plain kick ass and light up my life.

But I couldn't draw as fast as she requested. Thus, I tried to create the worst abomination of a comic that I could, so as to make her not want comics anymore. That abomination, my friends, was Happy Noodle Boy.

I could go through a lot of my old emails from when I first started doing comics. Back then the lowest age of fans was like 15 or 16 up to people in their 20's and 30's.

I'm just doing little bits and pieces for other magazines right now.

But now I have a lot of little kids who watched Invader Zim whenever they could find it on television.

It's very strange to go from being completely secluded and doing your own work for yourself, to having an audience - and having an audience that's aware of what you do and expects you to do things that they like. It can make things difficult.

After doing Johnny I wanted to just do something, I wouldn't say innocent, but to not have any care in the world. Lots of setups and horrible happenings but its funny.

I got to draw monsters, robots and write funny stories. I loved doing that stuff and working with the actors. But it got to be less and less that stuff and more about trying to be everywhere and not being able to do one thing very enjoyably.

I don't really get hate mail, which surprises me, but people have better things to do than to write hate mail to somebody who writes a book about hating everything, I guess.

I don't want little kids reading my comics.

Any pile of stunted growth unaware that entertainment is just that and nothing more deserves to doom themselves to some dank cell somewhere for having been so stupid!! Movies, books, T.V., music - they're all just entertainment, not guidebooks for damning yourself!

Nothing quite brings out the zest for life in a person like the thought of their impending death

Why does this person who is sitting behind a desk and never watches cartoons is arguing about what cartoons should be like. Its so creepy realizing that this person is a lunatic.

I take little bits and pieces of ideas that I may or may not believe in but I give them to this character and he runs with them. I have fun with however he handles the situation.

As I got farther and farther along in the series I did less and less preparation. I didn't use outlines or sketches. I just had a vague idea of what I wanted to tell and then the dialogue just came to me as I was inking the page.

Ever since I'm done with Zim everyone thinks that I'm going to go back to comics. I've been flooded with emails asking me if I'm working on the new Johnny over and over again.

There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt.

I think there is something a little too self conscious about enjoying being an outsider.

In pre-school, I was drawing dinosaurs - I was huge into dinosaurs. I wanted to be a paleontologist, not a cartoonist or a filmmaker or anything like that - just a paleontologist. So I would draw dinosaurs.

I've excluded happiness as one of those possibilities we seek for ourselves. Oh, I still want it, but that's beside the point. Contentment - they say it's the ultimate, but I can't even wish for that. I don't even want the desire to be content. I can only hope for silence.

Sometimes...you can cry until there's nothing wet in you. You can scream and curse to where your throat rebels and ruptures. You can pray, all you want, to whatever god you think will listen. And, still it makes no difference. It goes on, with no sign as to when it might release you. And you know that if it ever did relent...it would not be because it cared.

I am the rightful heir to the flaming global throne of evil. I WILL TAKE THIS WORLD AS MINE, so if you people could just cooperate it would be very nice.

The numbing mind-ream of knowing you're alone not because people won't accept you but because you find so little worth accepting. An imposed solitude is better than simply tolerating your company in waiting for something better. So loneliness is not such a terrible thing when you consider that the alternative to thought provoking solace is to be surrounded only by remindings of why that solitude is preferable.

I don't go to things because I want to see violence, I go to things because I want to see them handled well.

The beginning is always so fine!! But decay soon follows. A degeneration into the tired old situation. The rot sets in ... there is only the beauty of the start!

I never killed anyone. I avoid going over that edge by writing about a guy who has taken a flying leap over it.

Doing something purely for one's own enjoyment is fine, but, I must admit, finding that others enjoy it as well has a certain power over the corners of my mouth.

This is heaven. You can stop praying now.

And so, irritants, it is with this that I leave you. You are spared so that you can think of what it really is to live in a world that engenders a pain for which there is no comfort. Here is your product! You have the rest of your lives to think of this. And I suggest you think quickly, for a long life is never a guarantee.

Because of the audience I get and the fact that these people aren't traditional comics buyers I don't think the comic industry looks at that and thinks that is a very respectable thing. I'm very used to it. I'm not the guy who wins awards and gets mentioned in magazines.

I don't like it when people dress up like Zim, because they look like Hulks.

It's cool that people like what I do, but I don't work for the audience.

I'm always confused when people say how much they miss 'Invader Zim' because the show never stopped running in my head, and then I remember everyone else isn't in my head. I try to imagine the world for all those people who don't know what Zim's been up to since the show went off the air and it makes me shudder. How can people live that way? Hopefully this comic helps make the world a better place.

Children are all criminally insane, and must be destroyed!

In certain ways it is incredibly damaging considering the stuff I did before certainly wasn't for kids.

Dear Die-ary, today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender. I'm wondering if, maybe, there really is something wrong with me.

One day I will rule the world with a goat by my side!

The world would be a much nicer place if people only used guns on themselves.

It's a frightening world to be alone in.

I don't kill people. Perhaps it's just another inhibition to do away with it. Perhaps not. There's really no way of telling. It's possible I've just never been able to well up enough interest in any person to care long enough to end their life. I'd much rather avoid them altogether. Most of them. It's 4 A.M. and the sky is beautiful up and away from this room and this bed and the oppressive inevitability of sleep. I HATE SLEEP. But sleep always comes (that, or madness).

Whether in a suit or in a loincloth people are ignorant little thorns cutting into one another. They seem incapable of advancing beyond the violent tendencies which at one time were necessary for survival.

Trust me, I know what self loathing is. But to kill myself? That would put a damper on my search for answers. Not at all productive. Besides, I've become increasingly doubtful as to whether I can die at all. But let's not get into that.

Witty closing remarks have been replaced by massive head trauma and severe hemorrhaging.

I'm not the guy who wins awards and gets mentioned in magazines.

All the power to them but I'm not interested in making yet another show that looks like some other show.