A Quote by Ted Naifeh

I think about 'The Simpsons,' which has been going on for 25 years. Homer is still in his late 30's. Lisa is 8, Bart is 10. Their stories are told. Yet the series keeps going on and on like a zombie that won't lie down and die. That feels forced and unnatural. The characters never change, grow, age.
'The Simpsons' money got bigger and bigger. When I left 'The Simpsons', no one thought that this thing was going to still be around. It's the cumulative effect. It's like, 'Oh my God, 25 years later, and it's still coming in.'
I worry about 10, 15, 20, 25 years down the road. Where are we going to be in this age of nuclear weapons, where there is no margin for error?
We don't have great answers to what jobs will look like in 10, 20, 30 years. And I think it's right for people to have some anxiety in a world where driverless cars are going to take over. Like, how are you going - it's gotten really, how are you going to have a job in 10 years, and how are your kids going to have a job in 10 years, if you haven't gone to college or had a lot of hand-ups in the system, basically.
There's that wonderful line in Measure for Measure. I forget which of the characters has committed adultery and is going to die. He looks at his hand and says, "How could this die?" That's the joke. I've always thought, and this is nothing new, that we don't really believe we die. I think you're going to die, because I know that's what happens but I can't imagine I'm going to die.
'Ralph's Party' was a romantic comedy, and at the end of it, the two main characters, Ralph and Jen, kiss for the first time and think they're going to be happy together. Then, 10 years later, I wrote a sequel in which they've been together for 10 years and are about to split up.
There's a thing I think children realise at a certain age, which is that if their parents say, 'Don't do it', and they go ahead and do it, they're still not going to die. And I think that's what it is: that no matter what you do, you're not going to die.
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.
If you're going to do a memoir, then it's sort of at this age - in your late sixties or seventies - that you do it. I don't understand people who do memoirs when they're 20. I think most people need a little more time than 20 years to become the person they are. In fact, that process of becoming who you are is still ongoing when you get older, where you go, "Let's see where my next 10 years is going to take me." S
Each of us is comprised of stories, stories not only about ourselves but stories about ancestors we never knew and people we've never met. We have stories we love to tell and stories we have never told anyone. The extent to which others know us is determined by the stories we choose to share. We extend a deep trust to someone when we say, "I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone." Sharing stories creates trust because through stories we come to a recognition of how much we have in common.
My mother had no interest in cartoons. I remember thinking, 'I am never going to grow into that person.' Which is so ironic - now I get to work on 'Family Guy' and 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama', all of these great animated series! TV was my passion.
I had no idea what I was walking into, and the years and years of hard work it would take. I felt like an outsider and like it was never going to happen. But even if I would have known, I think I still would have done it. Dancers are perfectionists, and that's what keeps us going and growing.
For years and years, I convinced myself that I was unbreakable, an animal with an animal strength or something not human at all. Me, I told people, I take damage like a wall, a brick wall that never falls down, never feels anything, never flinches or remembers. I am one woman but I carry in my body all the stories I have ever been told, women I have known, women who have taken damage until they tell themselves they can feel no pain at all.
Typically in animation, the characters exist in a kind of stasis. Look at 'The Simpsons' - they never age, the baby never grows up - or 'Peanuts' - the kids never grow up, they always stay the same age.
I write my own stories. I like telling stories to little children. I think the good thing about stories is they carry you to another place which you've never been. And you feel like you're just enveloped by the book and the characters.
There can't be a pure myth, especially when the myth has been handed down in the oral tradition. As the stories are told, they change. If the stories don't change they just die.
Tony Bennett is still giving concerts, still singing. It's keeping him alive. He's in his late 80s now and he keeps going and going. I maintain, God bless him, it's this devotion to duty and working and being in front his audience.
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