A biography for Bruce Eric Kaplanhasn’t been written yet.
“I've had to whine for everything I've ever really wanted.”
“My cartoon life is in my office, and it's very separate and getting very in my own head. My television life is I'm begging one of the actors to say the line in the way I'd like them to.”
“I started trying to be a writer and failed for years. I tried novels, short stories, sitcoms, movies, plays, anything. And then, to support myself, I had millions of jobs on the fringes of show business.”
“I can't get enough of self-help books of all kinds.”
“I used cartoons as diaries. I still do. They're my way of figuring out the world, what's happening to me or what I'm thinking about.”
“One identity is as a television writer, which is very classically Southern California, but another of my personae is as a New Yorker cartoonist.”
“In Los Angeles, it's always nice out. In New York, it can be nice out or horrifying. You really have no idea what you're going to get on any given day.”
“I go through my day remembering things like telephone cords.”
“I've sat through boring speeches; didn't get up and leave.”
“No, I never - no one ever - I never learned anything when I was a kid. Honestly, my parents had nothing to tell me - like, no wisdom, nothing.”
“Of course I loved 'I Love Lucy' and saw every episode over and over again. I found it heartbreaking that Ricky got to be famous and have an exciting life at the Tropicana while Lucy was stuck in that terrible apartment with the Mertzes.”
“Shooting in Los Angeles is always pleasant and comfortable. Shooting in New York is like being on 'Survivor.'”
“Sometimes I'll be reading something online and just get so frustrated because of what people are saying.”
“I loved Charles Addams more than anything. Still love him.”
“In New York, all the crews read 'The New Yorker.' In Los Angeles, they don't know from 'The New Yorker.'”
“What I like about graduation speeches is that they're an opportunity for someone to make sense of their life and to impart that wisdom to someone else. It's like a sanctioned self-help moment.”
“My father would often start to say something, then say 'Forget it.'”
“I love graduation speeches. I have always loved them; I will always love them.”
“There was never any butter in our home. Just margarine. My parents acted like butter was lethal. I don't think I ever saw either one have a piece of butter. I would go over to friends' houses and down sticks of butter.”
“When I'm on the set, I'll come up with ideas if I'm sort of just between responsibilities, because there's a lot of sitting around on set. Invariably, though, the stuff I come up with on the set tends to be bad.”