Stephen Hillenburg Quotes

There are times over different projects when I've asked the writers why people are swearing for no good reason. I tell them that it would be funnier if there weren't these swear words.

It was exactly the same on the South Park movie really too. There's lots of violence in that too, but it always came down to anything sexual... They don't care about anything else.

I'm a huge fan of Warner Brothers cartoons. I would spend many hours alone after school watching Daffy Duck. I think Daffy Duck is one of the great comedic villains.

'Adult Swim' on the Cartoon Network is unbelievable. And 'South Park' continues to do great stuff. And 'Family Guy' and the various other Seth MacFarlane projects are amazing.

I wanted to cut down on the profanity, because I think I'm funnier without sayin' a lot of cuss words.

I once had a story editor ask me not to use the word 'placenta.' I wanted to say: 'Now tell me again how you got here?' Oh, right, an angel of God placed you into the bill of the stork.

I also love the makers of South Park, because they're political, strong, and they're making all of these comments that would get you shot for if you did it in a drama.

I constantly watch 'The Simpsons' and an English cartoon called 'The Raccoons' and 'Gummi Bears.' I was obsessed with ninja films, and the 'Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles,' I used to love that as well.

In my first story, 'Mr. Mysterious & Company'... I was asked to take out some of the humor because editors were afraid reviewers would dismiss the book as a joke. Today, humor is enjoyed and no longer regarded as literary brummagem.

I love all the Pixar movies, and I like 'Happy Feet Two.' 'Cause it has a lot of babies.

I'm a great admirer of cartoons, because I can't do cartoons.

The Simpsons are ugly-looking, and they should be. That's what works. That's one of the things that's funny.

For 35 years, I was a writer. I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren't funny. Some of them weren't appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that.

I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

Now, Richard Pryor was unique. Many misunderstood his humor. He lit up the hallway, but they didn't understand his use of profanity. He didn't use it just to be using it; he used it in the context of his satire.

I got a great kick being in the Warner Bros. studios - that was really cool. I kept singing the 'Looney Tunes' theme song all day. I'm sure they haven't heard that one before.

Shakespeare would never have gone far in today's politically correct world.

People ask 'do you make a conscious effort not to swear?' - if you're doing silly stuff you're not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.

I put the storyboard down and came back to it like two weeks later and saw that I had written 'Butt-Head' next to the picture, and it kind of made me laugh and I thought, Well, might as well go for every laugh you can get.

I do as much comedy as I possibly can, but I'm basically limited by the imagination of the secretaries who make the decisions.

I'm always fighting with profanity and Christian comedy. I'm telling you, it's always a fight. Because my father said to me, he said, 'Well, Kym, I feel like comics and people that use profanity, you have a lack of vocabulary, actually, a whole lot.'

A favorite film? The first 'Ice Age' and the first 'Despicable Me.' They're the films that have introduced me to characters that I still feel extremely bonded with.

People forget at the time that 'The Simpsons' started out, it was controversial - the fact that they said 'hell' and 'damn' in a cartoon was a lot. America was in an uproar.

If you watch a television show made by accomplished professionals of children's TV, it's all very expressive.

I loved cartoons as a kid, and so many funny moments in animation for me are nonverbal sounds, unarticulated mouth noise.