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" 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. "

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" 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

You

Walking

Surprise

" 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. "

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

Matt Groening

Never

Kid

" A lot of people believe that if everybody just did what they were told - obeyed - everything would be fine. But that's not what life is all about. That's not real. It's never going to happen. "

" 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. "

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

Matt Groening

Top

Want

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The tendency in comedy is to have a character who's stupid get more stupid, because you're trying to top yourself and not just repeat. "

" 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. "

" 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!' "

" 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

Angry

People

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The thing that makes me happiest about Simpsons Illustrated are all the drawings that we get from readers. I wish we could print them all. They're really imaginative. They show a lot of hard work. "

Matt Groening

Wish

Hard

" 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. "

" I loved literary science fiction. In fact, as a kid, when I was reading science fiction, I thought 'I can't wait for the future when the special effects are good' to represent what was in these books by Arthur C. Clarke, Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, Jack Vance. "

" I gave away 'Life in Hell' when it was a little 'zine, and sold it at record stores for $1, and I knew from the time that I first did it that I would continue to do it, because it was fun. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "