Matt Groening quotes: The Simpsons creator on having fun, overcoming a lack of support, parenting, and making money.
“You can’t keep blaming yourself. Just blame yourself once, and move on.”
“Living creatively is really important to maintain throughout your life. And living creatively doesn’t mean only artistic creativity, although that’s part of it. It means being yourself, not just complying with the wishes of other people.”
“You’ve got to embrace the future. You can whine about it, but you’ve got to embrace it.”
“You should listen to your heart, and not the voices in your head.”
“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”
“Everybody is clever, just in their own ways.”
“The next time you are contemplating a decision in which you are debating whether or not to go for the gusto, ask yourself this important question: ‘How long am I going to be dead?’ With that perspective, you can now make a free, fearless choice to do just about any goddamned sneaky thing your devious little mind can think up. Go ahead. Have your fun. You’re welcome. Go on.”
“Of course I’ve gone mad with power! Have you ever tried going mad without power? It’s boring and no one listens to you!”
“I’ve conducted an experiment on my kids. Instead of denying them access to media, I’ve encouraged it. They read comic books, play Nintendo, and watch way too much TV.”
“I’m a writer who just happens to draw.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I think when The Simpsons first came on, there was an uproar. People got used to it. They realized the show’s really funny, it’s got a heart, so I think it’s pretty safe.”
“I’m proud of what we do on the show, and I think it’s a time in our culture where people love to pretend they’re offended.”
“I think people really, really resonate to the idea of darker emotions in something that is considered a very light medium.”
“The success of the show has gone beyond my wildest dreams and worst nightmares.”
“My ultimate goal is to offend every country in the world.”
“No matter how good you are at something there’s always about a million people better than you.”
“I always try to keep in mind, from the time when I was working at the L.A. Reader till now, is that my most important relationship is with the audience.”
“That’s one of the frustrating things about Hollywood – you can’t go, ‘F*ck you, I’m going to the good guys.'”
“A lot of our writers, like Conan O’Brien, moved on to other things.”
“I can’t believe it! Reading and writing actually paid off!”
“I just don’t think he believed I had the talent. And like a lot of parents, he didn’t want me to be hurt. The nice thing was that he would leave his pens out for me to play with. But then he was not particularly approving of what I came up with.”
“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.”
“It felt like I was going to be playing for the rest of my life, I was going to be goofing off. Now I was able to turn it into a career that sustained me, but I didn’t know.”
“There was nobody who put their hands on my shoulder and said, ‘Boy, you got what it takes.’ I felt very discouraged from the time I was a kid to the time I became successful. There’s nobody out there that was really encouraging except for a few of my friends.”
“I draw a weekly comic strip called Life in Hell, which is syndicated in about 250 newspapers. That’s what I did before The Simpsons, and what I plan to do for the rest of my life.”
“I’ve been deadline-driven for my whole grown-up life, and that hasn’t gone away. It is nice to be able to reflect about the big picture, about what kind of stories you want to tell, and how to take advantage of success.”
“I knock myself out, and have knocked myself out for years and years and years, as a commercial artist, and people come to me all the time with proposals for money-losing endeavors, and I say, ‘I like endeavors that don’t have to make money, but don’t come to me with the intention of losing money.'”
“I like the idea of trying to be successful on some level, at least reaching an audience enough so that you can sustain it and keep on going. I’ve printed my share of money-losing underground comic books, and I’m sure I’ll do more stuff like that in the future, but it’s one thing to be pure and noble in your pursuit of your art and another thing to be willfully unsuccessful.”
“I judge my life by how miserable it used to be. If I could pay my rent, I was deliriously happy. Now I’m deliriously happy all the time.”
“My standard comment is, ‘If you don’t want your kids to be like Bart Simpson, don’t act like Homer Simpson.'”
“You don’t like your job, you don’t strike. You go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.”
“I wake up every morning thinking how lucky I am. It’s much, much better. I highly recommend it. Highly recommend making enough money to be able to pay your rent every month. It’s just the best.”
“To live at the beach and get to look at the Pacific Ocean when I wake up has been a dream of mine for a long time.”
“Stop thinking about fun and have it.”
