Seth MacFarlane quotes: excellent insight from the Family Guy creator.
“If you want to be successful then you must be willing to follow your heart and put in the work.”
“Nothing in life worth having comes easy, but the end results will be more than worth all the time and effort.”
“The resistance to science is idiotic.”
“There have to be people who are vocal about the advancement of knowledge over faith.”
“I’m not a fatalist. I’m not a religious person. I’m sure there are close calls that we’re not even aware of hundreds of times a year. You cross the street, and if you’d crossed the street two minutes later, you’d have been hit by a car, but you’d never know it. I’m sure that kind of stuff happens all the time.”
“I’m big on the importance of science, particularly right now at this point in time when there’s sort of a systematic rejection of science by a lot of people in America.”
“I was pretty hell bent on getting into the cartoon business specifically as an artist from the get-go. In high school, it was really – I pretty much knew what I wanted to do. There wasn’t any real deviation from that.”
“I was about two years old when I first started drawing recognizable characters.”
“I always showed a passion for animation, so it was of no surprise to my friends and family, that I decided to study animation once I graduated high school. I studied hard and put in a lot of hard work and effort and was rewarded with my degree in fine arts, a feat that I am still extremely proud of to this day.”
“I have a very windy path that I took to get to where I am. I did a lot of music theater when I was a kid. I was a member of a local theater group starting when I was about nine years old. And I did a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan, which is about as good a grounding as you can get in music. To have to learn that stuff at that age – you put your brain in the right frame of mind to appreciate great music from there on out.”
“I did a lot of theater when I was in high school and college. I also did stand-up in college, so it was always part of what I did.”
“I’m also extremely ambitious and focused. I went into high school and further education knowing exactly what I wanted to achieve. I not only wanted to get into animated TV, but I originally wanted to work for Disney. Once I graduated, I changed my mind and decided that maybe Disney wasn’t for me. How many students can say that? ‘Maybe I won’t work for Disney after all, I have bigger goals.'”
“My life has sounded like a pure success story, but there have been a number of obstacles and hurdles that I have had to overcome to get to where I am today. During the early seasons of Family Guy, the show was actually cancelled for a number of years. This had been my dream, my very own series, and it was vanishing right before my eyes. Instead of giving up and calling it quits, I kept on at Fox insisting that the show could make them all a lot of money.”
“Family Guy has this weird thing of attracting people. People either hate it or can’t get enough of it. There’s really no one in between.”
“The average person has eight different jobs over the course of their lifetime. You get a little antsy doing the same thing.”
“I’m the guy in the crowd making fun of the hero’s shirt. You gotta keep the funny intact.”
“When you are in a room and your job is to write jokes 10 hours a day, your mind starts going to strange places.”
“The success of The Simpsons really opened doors. It showed that if you were working in animation you didn’t necessarily have to be working in kids’ television.”
“Nobody sets out to offend or shock for the sake of shocking. You set out to get laughs.”
“You don’t want to be nasty for the sake of being nasty. I mean, if you’re actually depicting a real person – as opposed to a deliberately inappropriate kid’s play – then you have serious discussions. Are we doing this? Is this just cruel? Is this just mean? I think there’s this vision of Hollywood writers as just this hedonistic bunch who are just out to make their dough and do something that’s gonna be there for shock value. Not the case. I mean, my writers, most of them are married. They have children. And there are a lot of discussions that we have in that room. Is this funny enough? Is it satirical enough that it warrants the edginess of the material?”
“Whoever invented spray cheese had to have been a Harvard guy.”
“What makes me happy is just keeping my brain challenged and stimulated and on its toes.”
“Personally, I’m of the mindset that if parents are doing their jobs, it doesn’t matter what their kids are watching.”
“You break the story first, and then you go into the specifics.”
“When you can’t formulate a substantive rebuttal to an argument, you can always depend on, ‘That’s just… wow.'”
“I think at times I read too much of my own press. I wish I was better at taking in how great my life is, but that’s surprisingly elusive. I tend to be very hard on myself and insecure about failing no matter what happens.”
“My thought is always, ‘It’s only downhill from here.’ That’s how I’ve always operated, ever since I began Family Guy. I had the crippling fear that I used up all the funny last week. That crippling insecurity really drives you to do your best. Your moments of pure joy are few and far between, but they do exist.”
“I’m fascinated by things that scare me in entertainment, I’m fascinated by things I haven’t done, by things I could conceivably fail at.”
“I’m wide open to getting married, but actors are not easy people to date. You end up sharing that person with this other mistress that is their career. I very much like the traditional courtship method of making a date. That’s what they do in normal places, but Hollywood’s not normal.”
“[What’s one thing you wish you could tell your 18-year-old self?] Hmm, I don’t know, whatever you’re doing, keep doing it because things seem to have gone really well. I would probably warn him about 9/11, I guess, but then I would have to say you can’t f*ck with the timeline ’cause look what happened to Marty McFly. Leave him with that ethical quandary.”
“Believe it or not, I have about the same success rate as anyone else. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss.”
“I can’t believe I am hosting the Oscars. It’s an honor everyone else said no. Look, it’s a gig that has all eyes on it. And when you’re doing something that’s that much in the spotlight, with that much focus on it, that much intensity, you’re going to have a lot of opinions from a lot of people. I’m trying to think of the last time that I read a review of the Oscars the next day where everyone is raving about it – it’s been a long time, it’s not an easy job, and I’m not surprised that they have a tough time finding takers.”
“[On being a control freak] Who knows where it comes from? It’s something that drives you to continue to push yourself creatively. Look, there are things I would never do: bungee jumping, skydiving – you could not pay me a billion dollars. Those are challenges, fine. I will not get on a roller coaster. I was on a date once, and literally held the girls purse while she went on the roller coaster and was just fine with it. I’m fine being the guy holding the handbag!”
