Top 140 Matt Groening Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Matt Groening

52. “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

53. “I would prefer to listen to a French classical composer like Olivier Messiaen than to the pop hits of the day.”

— Matt Groening

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

— Matt Groening

55. “I may be biting off more than I can chew, but with ‘The Simpsons’ and with ‘Futurama,’ what I’m trying to do in the guise of light entertainment, if this is possible – is nudge people, jostle them a little, wake them up to some of the ways in which we’re being manipulated and exploited.”

— Matt Groening

56. “Ah, sweet pity. Where would my love life be without it?”

— Matt Groening

57. “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.”

— Matt Groening

58. “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

59. “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.”

— Matt Groening

60. “I can’t believe it! Reading and writing actually paid off!”

— Matt Groening

61. “We have ‘Doctor Who’ references on ‘Futurama,’ but we have a lot of science fiction references that I don’t get; but in the staff we have experts on ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Dungeons and Dragons.’”

— Matt Groening

62. “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

63. “I always say that ‘Futurama’ is real, and ‘The Simpsons’ is fiction.”

— Matt Groening

64. “I’m presently incarcerated. Convicted of a crime I didn’t even commit. Hah! “Attempted murder”? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?”

— Matt Groening

65. “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.”

— Matt Groening

66. “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

67. “Fans think they want to see more than the 10 to 20 seconds of Itchy and Scratchy that we put on the show, but my feeling is less is more. Once you’ve skinned and flayed a cat, ripped his head off, made him drink acid and tied his tongue to the moon, there really isn’t that much to say.”

— Matt Groening

68. “Books are useless! I only ever read one book, To Kill A Mockingbird, and it gave me absolutely no insight on how to kill mockingbirds! – Homer Simpson.”

— Matt Groening

69. “The conundrum that I face on a daily basis is that I have two sons who have grown up watching ‘The Simpsons,’ so they know exactly what buttons to push. They know how Bart irritates Homer, and they use these lines against me to tell me that I’m not funny anymore.”

— Matt Groening

70. “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

71. “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

72. “I don’t mind sharing the blame if she’ll just admit she started it.”

— Matt Groening

73. “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

74. “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

75. “When DVDs finally disappear, I’m going to be sad. I’ll miss the commentaries.”

— Matt Groening

76. “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

77. “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.”

— Matt Groening

78. “When you’re as important as I am, getting your feelings hurt by me is almost an honor.”

— Matt Groening

79. “I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals flaming.”

— Matt Groening

80. “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

81. “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

82. “We did ‘The Simpsons Movie,’ which took almost four years; it was the same people that do the TV show, and it just killed us. So that’s why there hasn’t been a second movie. But I imagine if the show ever does go off the air, they’ll start doing movies.”

— Matt Groening

83. “English? Who needs that? I’m never going to England.”

— Matt Groening

84. “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

85. “Your cable television is experiencing difficulties. Please do not panic. Resist the temptation to read or talk to loved ones. Do not attempt sexual relations, as years of TV radiation have left your genitals withered and useless.”

— Matt Groening

86. “Most TV shows don’t reward you for paying attention.”

— Matt Groening

87. “I also found child’s play – stuff that was not considered serious, but goofy – was the stuff I liked to do, so I still do it as an adult.”

— Matt Groening

88. “But we all had an agreement to let each other get away with everything! That’s Capitalism!”

— Matt Groening

89. “Humor does depend on surprise, and the things that people remember as the funniest things in the world, you look at later and you go, “What? What was that all about?””

— Matt Groening

90. “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

91. “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

92. “It’s just hard not to listen to TV: it’s spent so much more time raising us than parents have.”

— Matt Groening

93. “I personally like the idea of newspapers. It’s a good format. You can read it in whatever order you want. You can glance at it. There is something about a single screen and scrolling through pages that just doesn’t have the same appeal.”

— Matt Groening

94. “Vampires are make-believe, like elves, gremlins, and eskimos.”

— Matt Groening

95. “The amazing thing about Freak Out! was that there was nothing quite like it in rock ’n roll at the time. It was really simultaneously crude and ugly, and incredibly sophisticated. The Beatles were funny, but there was nothing with the kind of sneer that you could feel in the music of Frank Zappa.”

— Matt Groening

96. “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

97. “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

98. “For some reason, a lot of Hollywood big shots are curious to see how they’d be drawn with bulging eyes and no chin.”

— Matt Groening

99. “Welcome to Suckersville, man.”

— Matt Groening

100. “I went through a phase where people would introduce me at parties as a cartoonist, and everybody felt sorry for me. ‘Oh, Matt’s a cartoonist.’ Then people further feeling sorry for me would ask me to draw Garfield. Because I’m a cartoonist, draw Snoopy or Garfield or something.”

— Matt Groening