Joseph Barbera

“One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.”

“I have spent a lot of years on the outside looking in.”

“Except for me, no one in my family could draw.”

“Among the great glories of the MGM lot were the vast outdoor sets that had been constructed over the years.”

“Publicity gets more than a little tiring. You want it, you need it, you crave it, and you're scared as hell when it stops.”

“What about Mickey Mouse? Disney tried very hard to make him a star. But Mickey Mouse is more of a symbol than a real character.”

“Faced with the choice of enduring a bad toothache or going to the dentist, we generally tried to ride out the bad tooth.”

“I hate fishing, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to hike when you can get in the car and drive.”

“High-level, big-deal publicity has a way of getting old for me, but what never fails to thrill me is when I make personal appearances.”

“There is no law that says a man who earned a hundred million dollars in his first half-dozen years on the job has to be a decent human being, but Mike Eisner is that and more.”

“I was 82 years old before Who's Who thought I was enough of a big shot to do a piece on me.”

“My biggest kick comes from the individual fans I run into. Middle-aged men ask me when we're going to do more Johnny Quest cartoons.”

“Not once in six years did I make it to the office by 9 on the dot.”

“That's what keeps me going: dreaming, inventing, then hoping and dreaming some more in order to keep dreaming.”

“I don't know anyone who enjoys going to the hospital. To help remedy this, I got an idea to create what a Laugh Room in the pediatric ward of hospitals.”

“Los Angeles was an impression of failure, of disappointment, of despair, and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought.”

“Friends don't necessarily made good business or creative partners.”

“My marriage had been impulsive. That marriage should have been short-lived instead of the 23 years it spanned.”