I plan years in advance, but I like to leave enough space in the narrative scheme to change things, because I always get my best ideas the closer I come to the end of a project, after I’ve lived with it for a while.

Why did you make it so hard for me? I’d rather empty the ocean with a sieve. I do it for you. Or count the grains of sand on every beach. All for you. There are so many people, so many countries. But I have time. All the time in the world. Eternity.

We’re the new power, come to replace the old. Cameras in the head, children with microchips, spin doctors rewriting reality as it happens.

Kipling: Where’s your sense of humor? Rebis: We’re working on reconstructing it...

Sometimes I pretend not to look at my own characters, because that’s like different people getting off with your girlfriend or something.

Look at us! Are we not proof that there is no good, no evil, no truth, no reason? Are we not proof that the universe is a drooling idiot with no fashion sense – Mr Nobody on the fundamental philosophy of the Brotherhood of DADA.

He taught me that the measure of a man lies not in what he says but what he does.

It’s stupid, I know, but I care. All the things that meant so much when we were young. Under the blankets late at night, listening to long-distance radio. All those things lost now or broken. Can you remember? Can you remember that feeling? Perhaps I ought to go to a doctor.

I tend to only read comics written by friends or people I’ve known. And I’m not a great comic reader.

And when it’s all done, when there’s no one left you’ll come back for me. And tell me who I am and why I have to do what I do. And explain ‘Eternity.’ You’ll come back.