Stephen Hillenburg Quotes

I've always enjoyed watching characters that aren't aware that they're doing anything funny. And I think that inherently makes them funnier.

The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don't notice they're getting made fun of. So they'll say something back that's not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.

Awkwardness is such a gold mine for comedy.

I think it's amusing to watch a naive, well-meaning character kind of undo more cynical characters - kind of like watching Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin.

The ridiculousness and idiocy of life is embraced and examined. It nurtures the childhood perspective in everyone.

'Portnoy's Complaint' was very far out there, and movies have always worked when you have either a funny situation between two or more people or a very dramatic situation. There's not that much difference.

There are just so many funny kids and teenagers. They're just not aware of how funny they are.

You can laugh at somebody because they are innocent, and because they are naive or they are about to walk into a wall, but if somebody's giving you stuff, if somebody's talking, giving you their take on things, what makes you laugh, generally speaking, is going to be somebody who is telling it in an angry way.

Pooh is able to accomplish what he does because he is simpleminded.

Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.

My wife can't cook at all. She made chocolate mousse. An antler got stuck in my throat.

I am too childlike to be immature.

I have the heart of a child. I keep it in a jar on my shelf.

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.

I always wanted to entertain. When I was six, a scrawny, scrawny kid, I'd get in my red speedo and do muscle moves. I actually thought I was muscular. I didn't know everyone was laughing at me.

I must confess, I was born at a very early age.

I can remember a reporter asking me for a quote, and I didn't know what a quote was. I thought it was some kind of soft drink.

I do things, and other people laugh at them. I rarely know what the joke is supposed to be or why they're laughing.

My mother thinks Mick Jagger is a foreign car.

I have this weird obsession with kids and old people falling. Like, funny falls. It is awful, but it's the thing that makes me laugh the most.

There's just something about youth and comedy that go together. Maybe it's that foolishness, that silliness that you can get away with when you're younger, that you can't get away with when you're older.

Nothing is funnier than confidently doing the wrong thing.

When I was a kid, like four or five years old, I was obsessed with the 'Batman' TV show in the '60s. And I took it totally seriously. At that age, I took it completely seriously. I didn't get the fact that it was kind of played for laughs. I didn't understand why my mom was rolling her eyes or chuckling.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

I think kids relate to me because I have some ability to remain a little bit naive. Even during interviews. Mostly during interviews.