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

Here's to alcohol: the cause of, and answer to, all of life's problems.

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.

Matt Groening

Love You Underneath

The scary thing about the future... there will be tiny cameras everywhere, and they'll be flying around like mosquitoes and drones. That will be bad. Drones are scary. You can't reason with a drone.

Matt Groening

Future Car You

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

Age Yes Wit

There's always room out there for the hand-drawn image. I personally like the imperfection of hand drawing as opposed to the slick look of computer animation. But you can do good stuff either way. The Pixar movies are amazing in what they do, but there's plenty of independent animators who are doing really amazing things as well.

Matt Groening

Movies Good Amazing

My standard comment is, 'If you don't want your kids to be like Bart Simpson, don't act like Homer Simpson.'

Matt Groening

Men Home Art

Donuts. Is there anything they can't do?

Matt Groening

Thing Thin T

Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun.

Matt Groening

Love You Wit

On 'The Simpsons,' I will say that we definitely like to comment on what's going on in the world, and we try to be funny. If we can figure out a way of being funny about it, then we've gone part of the way of accomplishing our task.

Matt Groening

Men Funny Art

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.

Matt Groening

Life Art Yourself

I think 'Family Guy' and 'American Dad' have definitely staked out their own style and territory, and now the accusations are coming that 'The Simpsons' is taking jokes from 'Family Guy.' And I can tell you, that ain't the case.

Matt Groening

Family You USA

Don't have a cow, man.

Matt Groening

T Man Cow

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

Work You Wrote

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.

Matt Groening

Great You Wit

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

Car Art You

'The Simpsons' is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but who drive you completely crazy.

Matt Groening

Love Family You

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

Matt Groening

Ways Way The Simpsons

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.

Matt Groening

Time Men Life

In 'Futurama,' the skin color is no longer yellow. They have actually evolved to cartoon skin tone. But they still have four fingers.

Matt Groening

Car Art Yellow

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.

Matt Groening

Funny UN Ugly

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

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.

Matt Groening

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

Matt Groening

When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.

Matt Groening

I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know why I will do it again.

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

When The Simpsons came around, there really was nothing else like it on TV. It's hard to imagine, but when Fox first took the plunge with it, it was considered controversial to put animation on prime time.

Matt Groening

With Charlie Brown, it was about loneliness and isolation. I always thought that the thing about Charlie Brown and those characters was the absence of the parents. Half the strip was about who wasn't there. The parents were never in the picture.

Matt Groening

I want it to go on, but I want us to go out on top.

Matt Groening

You've got to embrace the future. You can whine about it, but you've got to embrace it.

Matt Groening

'Adult Swim' on the Cartoon Network is unbelievable. And 'South Park' continues to do great stuff. And 'Family Guy' and the various other Seth MacFarlane projects are amazing.

Matt Groening

With 'Futurama,' I was just worried that somebody would beat us to it; it seemed so obvious that there should be an animated science fiction show set in the future. And one of the reasons why it's not, I learned, is that it's really, really difficult.

Matt Groening

One of the great things about the Internet is that you can read what everybody has to say about everything. It is fascinating to me, the critiques about humor by people who have no sense of humor.

Matt Groening

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.

Matt Groening

Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.

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

With 'Futurama,' I wanted to do unrequited love, and David Cohen agreed, and although our original plan was never to have Fry and Leela get together, we finally just said, 'You can only string the fans along so far.'

Matt Groening

I have less to do with 'The Simpsons' every season, but I stick my nose in here and there. Basically, it's just trying to keep the characters consistent and making sure the show has a soul.

Matt Groening

When DVDs finally disappear, I'm going to be sad. I'll miss the commentaries.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

We've been running a little behind schedule. But only by about 15 years or so.

Matt Groening

Basically, everything I try to do is to present an alternative to what somebody else is doing.

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

Because good writing in a TV cartoon is so rare, I think the animation on The Simpsons is often overlooked.

Matt Groening

The nice thing about 'Futurama' for me personally was that it was a way to honor some of the traditional ideas in literary science fiction, not so much movie or television science fiction - although we have that too, obviously. Our situation, a workplace comedy, led to all sorts of stuff.

Matt Groening