Sometimes people try to read into my strip and find out what my state of mind is. And I can say if I’m in a good mood, generally the comic strip starts out in a good mood, but the punchline is very negative and sour. – Matt Groening
If I have one technology tip of the day, it’s this: No matter how good the video on YouTube is, don’t read the comments, just don’t, because it will make you hate all humans. – Matt Groening
‘The Simpsons’ from the very beginning was based on our memories of brash ’60s sitcoms – you had a main title theme that was bombastic and grabbed your attention – and when you look at TV shows of the 1970s and ’80s, things got very mild and toned down and… obsequious. – Matt Groening
People go into cartooning because they’re shy and they’re angry. That’s when you’re sitting in the back of a classroom drawing the teacher. – Matt Groening
‘The Simpsons’ basically – and ‘Futurama’ – are really smart shows. They’re kind of disguised as these goofy animated sitcoms, but the references within the shows, if you’re paying attention, are pretty smart and pretty sophisticated. – Matt Groening
The writers led by Mike Scully are fantastic. And they’re creating original stories that not only don’t repeat what we’ve already done, they also don’t repeat anything I’ve seen on television. – Matt Groening
We’ve got a bunch of new writers now who tell me they grew up watching The Simpsons. It’s bizarre, and they’re writing some very funny stuff. – Matt Groening
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. – Matt Groening
You’ve got to embrace the future. You can whine about it, but you’ve got to embrace it. – Matt Groening
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. – Matt Groening
I went to Bali, and I was in a small village, and somebody who was with me showed a woman a little figurine of Bart and asked: ‘Do you know who this is?’ And she said: ‘Mickey Mouse.’ – Matt Groening
‘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. – Matt Groening
Our solution on ‘The Simpsons’ is to do jokes that people who have an education, or some frame of reference, can get. And for the ones who don’t, it doesn’t matter, because we have Homer banging his head and saying, ‘D’oh!’ – Matt Groening
Basically, everything I try to do is to present an alternative to what somebody else is doing. – Matt Groening
Well, most grown-ups forget what it was like to be a kid. I vowed that I would never forget. – Matt Groening
I had been drawing my weekly comic strip, ‘Life in Hell,’ for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was developing ‘The Tracey Ullman Show’ for the brand-new Fox network. He wanted me to come in and pitch an idea for doing little cartoons on that show. – Matt Groening
I know for a fact, obviously, because my kids grew up watching the show, that there are some things they are introduced to from ‘The Simpsons’, and then later in life they see the thing we’re parodying. My kids had not seen ‘Casablanca,’ and we’d done parodies of ‘Casablanca.’ – Matt Groening
I love the idea that we put in jokes the kids don’t get. And that later, when they grow up and read a few books and go to college and watch the show again, they can get it on a completely different level. – Matt Groening
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. – Matt Groening
I think there is a certain charm to the hand drawn image that I like. My problem with CGI is that it’s so rich in texture that my eyes actually get tired. Everything is in focus down to the littlest leaf. – Matt Groening
The thing about a cartoon is, you can do whatever you want. The tightrope that we are walking on ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Futurama’ is ‘How do you continue to surprise the audience, but make them good surprises?’ Not every surprise is good, but you want to continue jolting people. – Matt Groening
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. – Matt Groening
As astute followers of ‘Life in Hell’ will notice, Akbar and Jeff wear the same striped T-shirt as Charlie Brown. ‘Peanuts’ was very important to me. – Matt Groening
Charles Schultz is a really interesting case. He wrote that comic strip and drew it himself from beginning to end, and it’s a work of genius. It’s very simply drawn, but it has some really deep emotions that you don’t expect in a silly-looking comic strip. – Matt Groening
I basically drew my own family. My father’s name is Homer. My mother’s name is Margaret. I have a sister Lisa and another sister Maggie, so I drew all of them. I was going to name the main character Matt, but I didn’t think it would go over well in a pitch meeting, so I changed the name to Bart. – Matt Groening
My standard comment is, ‘If you don’t want your kids to be like Bart Simpson, don’t act like Homer Simpson.’ – Matt Groening
I grew up completely overwhelmed by TV, and part of the reason why I have gone into television is as a way to justify to myself all those wasted hours of watching TV as a kid. I can now look back and say, ‘Oh, that was research.’ – Matt Groening
