Randall Munroe

I love learning about the science that governs the universe around us and want to share the delight of discovering how things work and why.

Some of the first infographics I did started off as notes to myself: trying to plot out, for instance, how IP addresses are allocated. After a while, I thought, 'This is a neat thing I can share with people, and they can follow me along in that process of understanding.'

People often say, 'I like your comics, even though I don't know enough math to get all of them,' as if it's some kind of club where they don't belong. But there's no club. There's just lots of people who are excited about thinking, learning, joking, and sometimes overanalyzing things.

A lot of times, the idea of a comic will be, 'Wouldn't it be cool if you...' But instead of doing it, I'll draw a comic about it.

There is a danger of building an identity around the idea of being smart because it is very easy to become off-putting, to become exclusionary.

Once I got married, I started working from an office. I found that having somewhere to go that isn't my house is mentally helpful: 'This is the place where I answer email and write blog posts,' and 'over there is the place where I do the dishes.'

The nice thing about being on the Internet is that you're not as recognisable as someone that's been on TV.

An artist shouldn't be judged by how many people like his art but by how pure and good it is - but I think that when you're telling jokes, which is more what I'm doing, if people aren't laughing, you're telling bad jokes.

I think that putting merchandising into the hands of the artist themselves is one of the best things for the artist.

A lot of people will refer to comics by number to me, and I'll realize they're expecting me to remember all the comics by number. And I can't even remember what I ate this morning, let alone which comic was #473!

I learned very early on in life that not everyone wants to hear every fact in the world, even if you want to tell them everything you've ever read.

The thing about the Internet is that you can write something... for a very narrow audience and make a living at it.