Bruce Eric Kaplan

“It's not like during your normal day, anyone says, 'How do having meaning in your life? How do you make meaning in your life?'”

“I started doing a Twitter feed when my father was dying. I was very distracted, preoccupied. It was upsetting.”

“I always doodled as a kid while I was talking on the phone or watching TV.”

“Actually, I think that 'Seinfeld' tackles the same kinds of issues as 'Six Feet Under,' just in a different way.”

“Graduation speeches force you to reflect. They are about consciousness. Nothing is better than consciousness.”

“It was memorable the first time 'The New Yorker' bought a cartoon from me. I had been sending them batches for years every week, and they didn't respond to them.”

“I thought about trying to do a strip. I even tried to do it, but I felt I didn't have the voice. Even though I liked that form, I didn't think I thought in the form of the three panels.”

“My mother couldn't take having three boys. She was extremely jumpy, to say the least. Any noise startled her. The sound of a pot dropping on the ground could make her hit the ceiling.”

“I'm continually working on myself. Nothing ever actually works.”

“I've had mostly book parties, where I get very focused on inviting everyone and not forgetting anyone, although of course one always does, and being worried no one will show up, but mostly the book comes from going to parties and feeling very, for lack of a better word, anxious.”

“In many ways, cartooning is my therapy. I've always said they're like my diaries. It's thoughts and feelings and things I've seen on any particular day.”

“Yes, the people I draw don't have a wide variety of looks. Every now and then I'll spruce it up, like a woman will be wearing a two-piece suit as opposed to a one-piece, or a man will not be wearing a tie; he'll just have a collar.”

“My mother always bought our birthday gifts.”

“I never really got into 'The Munsters' that much, but there was one aspect that was compelling. That was Marilyn. She was the only normal one among this group of creatures.”

“In L.A., you can put out a craft-service table anywhere, and it's no big deal. But in New York, people who walk by it on the street get really angry about it.”

“I was trying to be a writer, and I was kind of getting sidetracked, so I started doing cartoons as a form of expression.”

“We are all just little dolls of ourselves. Who occasionally pull back the curtains to reveal the real us.”

“When I was a kid, and I was watching TV, I just loved it so much that I wanted to crawl into that TV.”

“As an adult, it's hard for me to remember my mother before her sickness. But if I go back into childhood, I can access that.”

“Traditionally, the only way I come up with cartoons is by sitting at my desk and thinking.”