Matt Groening Quotes

Everybody should get to make a living with their passion.

I began as a journalist for my pocketbook and a poet for my soul.

I'm one of those people who thinks you can have a happy life and still be an artist.

I think I'll work all my life. When you're having fun, why stop having fun?

I think as long as acting feels fulfilling and continues to feel fulfilling, it's worth it to me.

Domesticity is the enemy of art. I don't know if that's true. You can write good happy songs. So, I don't think it's necessarily happiness. But I think self-satisfaction is maybe the enemy. It's kind of better to think, "Tomorrow night I'm gonna sing it better." There is this forward effort. It feels to me right, it feels human.

If somehow I can, before I leave this earth, combine my absolutely mad freedom and excitement with truth, then I will have done something.

From a young age, I had done a lot of theater and musical theater. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life, but every time I was away from acting, I just felt very incomplete and a little stir crazy.

Coming back to theatre is something I'm keen to do for the rest of my life. It recharges my batteries, so to speak.

There are lots of things I could have done for the money, but I've made a great living doing the things I want to do.

I don't want to spend my life doing jobs that I don't care about.

I hope that in 5 years from now I'll be working and doing what makes me happy. Whatever that may be.

I only want to make music because I have a passion for it.

At times, I think of my career as a map. The closer you get to the map, the more you know where you are, but the closer I get to my career, the less happy I feel. At the same time, I have carved out the career for myself which I wanted.

I make movies. I have a passion. Puppies and daisies don't accomplish anything. That's not me at all.

I love life. I'm fascinated by human behavior because that feeds back into my work.

My advice is: if you've got to be miserable to write great music, then drive a truck.

I've never worried about being rich or famous - for me, it's all about the dancing.

It's time for me to do things I like so I will be happy, my wife will be happy, my friends will be happy. I just want to do something I'm proud of. It's time for me to change. I could sign with a company for 10 movies and I'm the king of video and so what?

In truth, making films doesn't feel like hard work because I always have such a good time doing it.

I want to paint. That is probably going to sound so pretentious coming from someone who's been a musician.

I'm voraciously looking to express myself in my work. I love my work.

The basic answer is that I wasn't happy or fulfilled by the job I had and I wanted my life to mean something to me, so I searched my life experience and realized that acting and performing were activities that I enjoyed all aspects of.

I no longer look at my life and times in the motion picture industry as my career. I just look at it now as something I like and want to do.

I didn't do it for the money. I know a lot of people say that, but if I'd wanted to be rich, I'd have stayed working as a city lawyer. I gave that up eight years ago and took a massive drop in salary, and I didn't mind because I was doing what I loved. There's plenty of material for the other five books.