Matt Groening

“It's a funny show. The characters are surprisingly likable, given how ugly they are. We've got this huge cast of characters that we can move around. And over the last few seasons, we've explored some of the secondary characters' personal lives a bit more.”

“'The Simpsons' is an especially collaborative show.”

“I was always frightened by taverns. They just seemed like very unpleasant places to go.”

“Back in high school, I wrote a novel about a character named Bart Simpson. I thought it was a very unusual name for a kid at the time. I had this idea of an angry father yelling 'Bart,' and Bart sounds kind of like bark - like a barking dog.”

“The best stories in our culture have some sort of subversiveness - Mark Twain, 'Catcher in the Rye.' You provide kids with great stories and teach them how to use the tools to make their own.”

“Nihilism in American comedy came along way before 'The Simpsons.' There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to 'Saturday Night Live,' for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.”

“My father was a really sharp cartoonist and filmmaker. He used to tape-record the family surreptitiously, either while we were driving around or at dinner, and in 1963 he and I made up a story about a brother and a sister, Lisa and Matt, having an adventure out in the woods with animals.”

“Most TV shows don't reward you for paying attention.”

“A lot of our writers, like Conan O'Brien, moved on to other things.”

“I've loved science fiction ever since I was a little kid, mainly from looking at the covers of science-fiction magazines and books, and I've read quite extensively as an adult.”

“Oftentimes, what seems to be a street lunatic charging at me spouting gibberish turns out to be a devoted 'Simpsons' fan quoting their favorite line.”

“Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good". All available evidence, however, points to the contrary.”

“Well, most grown-ups forget what it was like to be a kid. I vowed that I would never forget.”

“With animation, because you can draw anything and do anything and have the characters do whatever you want, the tendency is to be very loose with the boundaries and the rules.”

“I like all of the early relationship strips that were collected in 'Love Is Hell,' where I pretended to be an expert in relationships and did comics like 'The Nine Types of Boyfriends,' 'Sixteen Ways to End a Relationship,' 'Twenty-Four Things Not to Say in Bed,' and other arbitrarily numbered lists.”

“Everybody doesn't have to get every joke. People really appreciate not being condescended to.”

“I always say that 'Futurama' is real, and 'The Simpsons' is fiction.”

“'The Simpsons' obviously is a huge success, and Fox has nothing to do with its success, with its creative success, and as a result they don't really like the show. They don't like 'The Simpsons' at Fox.”

“I thought I was going to make crazy cartoons for the rest of my life. I didn't think I'd ever get paid for it, didn't think I drew well enough, but I knew it made me happy.”

“Cartooning is for people who can't quite draw and can't quite write. You combine the two half-talents and come up with a career.”