Top 33 Bruce Eric Kaplan Quotes

James Thurber was an inspiration because his drawings were so primitive. I am self-taught – I didn’t go to art school – so I thought when I started doing them, ‘If James Thurber can be a cartoonist, I can,’ because his stuff is very raw.

Actually, I think that ‘Seinfeld’ tackles the same kinds of issues as ‘Six Feet Under,’ just in a different way.

My cartoon life is in my office, and it’s very separate and getting very in my own head. My television life is I’m begging one of the actors to say the line in the way I’d like them to.

I love graduation speeches. I have always loved them; I will always love them.

I started doing a Twitter feed when my father was dying. I was very distracted, preoccupied. It was upsetting.

In L.A., you can put out a craft-service table anywhere, and it’s no big deal. But in New York, people who walk by it on the street get really angry about it.

No, I never – no one ever – I never learned anything when I was a kid. Honestly, my parents had nothing to tell me – like, no wisdom, nothing.

I used cartoons as diaries. I still do. They’re my way of figuring out the world, what’s happening to me or what I’m thinking about.

I’ve had mostly book parties, where I get very focused on inviting everyone and not forgetting anyone, although of course one always does, and being worried no one will show up, but mostly the book comes from going to parties and feeling very, for lack of a better word, anxious.

What I like about graduation speeches is that they’re an opportunity for someone to make sense of their life and to impart that wisdom to someone else. It’s like a sanctioned self-help moment.

In television writing, you want to hear what the characters say as opposed to giving them something to say. It’s the same with the cartoons.

I read the ‘New Yorker’ when I was a kid. I used to love the cartoons and pick the cartoons out of the library, so I felt I knew the world of their cartoons.

My mother couldn’t take having three boys. She was extremely jumpy, to say the least. Any noise startled her. The sound of a pot dropping on the ground could make her hit the ceiling.

There was never any butter in our home. Just margarine. My parents acted like butter was lethal. I don’t think I ever saw either one have a piece of butter. I would go over to friends’ houses and down sticks of butter.

I’m continually working on myself. Nothing ever actually works.

I started trying to be a writer and failed for years. I tried novels, short stories, sitcoms, movies, plays, anything. And then, to support myself, I had millions of jobs on the fringes of show business.

I’ve had to whine for everything I’ve ever really wanted.

It’s not like during your normal day, anyone says, ‘How do having meaning in your life? How do you make meaning in your life?’

I actually thought, like, I was sure ‘Get Smart’ and, like, ‘James Bond’ movies, I was sure that that’s what real life was like.

It’s self-soothing for me to draw. So if I’m upset, drawing makes me less upset.

All I can really tell you about my father is that he did odd things like put tin foil on a bottle of beer after having a few sips, then put it in the refrigerator to perhaps have on another night.

We only got clothing once a year, like, right before school began. It’s like, that’s when you got your clothing.

I loved Charles Addams more than anything. Still love him.

Yes, the people I draw don’t have a wide variety of looks. Every now and then I’ll spruce it up, like a woman will be wearing a two-piece suit as opposed to a one-piece, or a man will not be wearing a tie; he’ll just have a collar.

In many ways, cartooning is my therapy. I’ve always said they’re like my diaries. It’s thoughts and feelings and things I’ve seen on any particular day.

Graduation speeches force you to reflect. They are about consciousness. Nothing is better than consciousness.

I am assuming my father learned at an early age that there is nothing more dangerous than showing your true self. I think a lot of us learn that, and it actually may be true.

Traditionally, the only way I come up with cartoons is by sitting at my desk and thinking.

I can’t get enough of self-help books of all kinds.

I never really got into ‘The Munsters’ that much, but there was one aspect that was compelling. That was Marilyn. She was the only normal one among this group of creatures.

I thought about trying to do a strip. I even tried to do it, but I felt I didn’t have the voice. Even though I liked that form, I didn’t think I thought in the form of the three panels.

When I was a kid, and I was watching TV, I just loved it so much that I wanted to crawl into that TV.

My mother always bought our birthday gifts.