Top 50 Raphael Bob-Waksberg Quotes

Why do we want to win an award? Yes, my grandmother would be very proud, but I think it’s also so people can hear, ‘Oh, this show won an award. I guess it’s good. I should watch it now.’

I think as soon as we start thinking of ourselves as good people, that’s when we start letting ourselves off the hook which is bad. I think we should always be trying to be better but that doesn’t mean we want to be good.

I was doing this really wacky sketch comedy but at the same time writing these dark, cerebral plays about characters coming to grips with their loneliness and heartbreak. My dream job has always been a way to combine the two. I would say ‘BoJack Horseman’ is the culmination of all of that.

I think there’s something very valid about having feelings that you can’t articulate. I don’t think you should shut those feelings out, but I also want to be able to communicate them.

I – you know, I know almost nothing about sports. So whenever I hear anything involving sports, my go-to move is to kind of nod and agree.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was staying with a friend of a friend of a friend up in the Hollywood Hills. I was in this tiny little closest paying $400 a month in this beautiful house.

I’d like to think that ‘Bojack,’ in some ways, pushes the edges of what some people think an adult animated show can be. That was an intention of mine while making the show.

I would like to see BoJack find some sort of peace. I don’t know if happiness is the right word; I don’t know if he deserves that… But I would like to think even a soul as lost as BoJack can somehow crawl his way toward redemption.

I am doing what I can to expand the tent and bring up other people and make sure we are telling different kinds of stories.

I think life doesn’t necessarily have an endgame.

It is so easy now to never get bored because we have our phones with us all the time and we are always looking at stuff. I think when we get bored we are the most creative.

Look, anything any writer writes is going to be on some level autobiographical. Part of the funny/sad thing is that you don’t always know how autobiographical you’re being.

I had behavioral problems. I didn’t always feel like I fit in. Which is somewhat universal. I don’t want to imply that I was like some super out-there kid.

You’re going to get different kinds of animation for different kinds of audiences. Traditionally, adult animation has been for the young male audience. There’s no reason why that should be.

It’s much easier for me to think in terms of character movement and emotion and story rather than, ‘What are some wacky hijinks we can throw together?’

I don’t know if animation is a style. It’s a format.

I think ‘BoJack’ is definitely very much about kind of the burdens of being comfortable.

Humor was a big part of my childhood. My family was full of comedians. We’d sit around the dinner table and try to one-up each other. It sometimes ended in tears, but usually in laughter.

When we started on ‘BoJack,’ it was understood that the Netflix model was to give shows time to find an audience, and to build that audience, and I remember being told, ‘We expect the biggest day ‘BoJack’ Season 1 is going to have is when we launch ‘BoJack’ Season 2.’

I’m mostly interested in characters and how they manifest themselves in their relationships. I’m delighted that people relate to the characters in ‘Bojack,’ and hopefully they will too to the characters in ‘Undone.’ If they understand themselves or feel seen in a new way, I think that’s a wonderful thing.

I’ve been in rooms where the creator has sold a show and then felt like the network didn’t buy the show they wanted. They bought a show they thought they could craft into the show they wanted.

I love to go on road trips. That’s one thing I love about being in L.A. and having a car. In New York, you can get around on the subway but you can’t really go anywhere. But there’s a danger in believing that where you are defines you.

I am really excited by the form of short fiction.

I don’t believe in good people and bad people.

BoJack’ is a very much a format-based show. The story should always match the format, but I don’t necessarily think the story has to come first.

The Comeback’ is so cringey and difficult, but watching it, what I was really struck with was the kindness and the generosity.

If you try to guess what people are gonna think, you’re chasing the wrong thing.

I don’t believe there is any line bad enough that a good actor can’t save.

With Bojack we are seeing him on this journey. I think we’re hoping for him to find a way to be more gracious and kind and positive and better to people in his life and better to himself, but I don’t know if I necessarily frame it as he was a bad person and he will become a good person.

I was very moved by shows that combined things that were funny and sad. I remember liking ‘Simpsons’ episodes in which emotions were central.

I kind of want to take the writer down a peg. I think there are a lot of pretentious writers in this business, which I am certainly one, in certain cases.

Saying someone’s a fan of animation is as silly as saying someone’s a fan of live action. That can mean anything.

That’s all life is, I guess. Just a bunch of riffs. Look at me: I’m wearing a tie. Why am I wearing a tie? It’s because I saw an adult wear a tie and I thought, Oh, that’s what people do. We’re all just trying to be what an adult is.

I wanted BoJack to be more of a cautionary figure than someone that you aspire to be.

I am a big fan of ‘Rick and Morty.’

I have a lot of affection for those old shows. You can put on an episode of ‘Full House’ or ‘Family Matters’ or ‘Growing Pains’ now and I’ll watch it. And I’ll totally enjoy it.

I think we’re so often, as writers, afraid of writing something that is less than perfect, and that fear paralyzes us. I’m a big fan of writing less than perfect things.

What I also love about Lorrie Moore stories is they take me a long time to read. They’re not easy for me because each sentence, I feel like, is so rich and dense, it just sends me off in a thousand directions.

I think you need to think of yourself as a flawed human being with aspirations for goodness and never start to think, ‘Oh, I am a good guy. These other people are bad guys. They’re dumb, I am smart.’

If you are stuck on a problem, go for a walk and think about something else for a little bit. Going for a walk is very helpful for a writer because if you are staring at a blank page of a computer screen there is all this pressure.

When you surround yourself with white people, you continue to hire white people, and when you make an effort to hire people of color, that does bring in different stories and different people.

My work is my work and my life is my life.

Whenever I talk about how good season two of ‘The Comeback’ is, people ask, ‘Do I have to see season one?’ And I say, ‘You get to see season one.’

I don’t know, I don’t know how to do anything. I’m just like, doing impressions of what I’ve seen other people do, and hoping no one knows that I’m actually just a little monster in a human suit making my arms go up and down.

I think I am someone who is very interested in structure and different ways of delivering jokes.

I had ADD as a kid and often acted as the class clown. My teachers used to tell my mom, ‘Raphael thinks he’s a real comedian.’

When I write, I try to turn my Internet off so I can’t procrastinate through the Internet, but then I just get deeply involved in whatever I have just on my computer.

Art is a dialogue. I’m throwing rocks across a chasm and hoping people catch them on the other side.

I have a short attention span.

Netflix really trusts us. We don’t get a lot of network notes. They’re not coming back all the time like, ‘Oh, this is too sad,’ or ‘This is too weird.’