"When I first started drawing the earliest incarnation of 'Optic Nerve,' I hadn't even been on a date..." — Adrian Tomine

I grew up with a very romantic, idealized vision of New York, probably because of all the books I read and the movies I watched.

In general, daily strips were just a regular part of my childhood. So even if I wasn't a huge fan of most of those strips, I still read them religiously every morning while I ate my cereal.

There's a lot of books that I've purchased simply because of the cover design. On the other hand, there's certain books that, even if I'm very curious about the content, I can't bring myself to buy if I really dislike the cover.

For a lot of the time I was in Berkeley, I was single. I was living in a kind of collegiate apartment by myself - it was like a protracted summer vacation. So at least in hindsight, I have gloomy emotions attached to Berkeley, whereas I started coming to New York because I was dating someone, and it was very exciting and romantic.