Italian to English Art/Literary General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters Character-based narrative

This comic book writer, whose comic strip has started to become very succesful, has just been recounting about how a fan approached him at a comics fair and told him how senseless his life would be without the comic story.

"...olete sapere un segreto? Io odio [comic strip name]. No, non è che sputo nel piatto dove mangio, per carità, è solo che…insomma, potrò farci quello che mi pare con il mio piatto? Ma questo è un altro discorso. Dove eravamo rimasti?"

I can see he is saying he knows that he can do what he likes with his how fate/success etc., but I cannot find an accurate way to wrap this up into a compact colloquial-type dialogue.