STEVE BREEN

I have four boys and two girls, and the girls, they typically want you to draw princesses, Tinkerbell, Cinderella, things like that.

I use a quill pen dipped in India ink. I also like Faber-Castell brush pens and Pigma Micron pens. And I work on Duo-Shade board.

It's a fun job, but it's stressful because you have to be funny. You have to have punch lines and captions. Be funny now! And if you're not inspired, they don't care - be funny now! They have to fill that hole the next day.

Big stories have lots of angles, and you have to decide what part of that story you want to address.

I loved practical jokes. I loved being goofy on the playground, and I loved doing silly cartoons, but I was not this subversive little delinquent. I am an Eagle Scout, after all.

My parents always got a kick out of my art. I was always able to make them laugh. As I got older, I remember the thrill I got when I graduated from making my classmates laugh to making adults laugh. Kind of a watershed moment.

Comic-Con is incredibly important to San Diego, but that doesn't mean we can't poke a little fun at it!

When I first started as an editorial cartoonist, I was terrified on a daily basis. Filling that hole the next day, knowing that tens of thousands of people were going to expect something funny. There is still that pressure, but you kind of learn how to cope with it a little better.

When I was starting out in 1988, I was doing cartoons on President George H. W. Bush, Iraq and the fall of Soviet Union.

I'm fully aware that not every cartoon is Pulitzer material. That said, I'm proud of my Pulitzer portfolio, the 20 that got judged.

A gorilla with a cellphone riding a bicycle is bound to generate some clever captions.

It's sometimes hard to wrap your head around a big story, and for most of us drawing editorial cartoons 9/11/ 01, that was the biggest story of our professional lives.

As an editorial cartoonist now, I live for those moments of inspiration, and it is exhilarating to be inspired by a topic, have an opinion on the topic, come up with a good cartoon on the topic, and to draw it and get it in the paper the next day. That is what I live for.

Birthplace of Obama: Oahu. Birthplace of Obama's budget policies: Neverland.

Drawings don't have a point. Cartoons, you want to have an opinion; you want them to express a viewpoint.

I read the 'New York Times,' 'USA Today,' the 'Union-Tribune,' then go online to Drudge, CNN, Fox News, blogs.

My dad was an FBI agent. My mom and dad were straight arrow types, and I had a conservative, suburban Orange County upbringing.

My favorite caricaturist is Al Hirschfeld. I'm always trying to give my caricatures that streamlined quality - and I often fall short.

Women are more difficult to caricature than men - partly because beauty is more difficult to caricature.

No one should ever be hurt or killed for saying, writing or drawing anything.

We can self-censor ourselves for various reasons, but we can't live in a world where some person or some group decides what's offensive and what's not.

When I look at someone's face, there's something in my brain that just clicks - that breaks down their face into the elements that go into a caricature. It might be like the way a chef tastes a dish and can break down into elements what went into it.

For an encore, I might do health-care cartoons using my own blood. That will be my last act.

Chess is a thinking person's game. But you don't have to be smart to know what's funny! Lots of check, mate!

I developed my love for the news because of my love for international news.