Matt Groening Quotes

I'm a cartoonist. I write and draw comic books and graphic novels. I'm also a coder.

Cartoonists create so many cartoons on any given topic that we can follow the life cycle of a comic idea and how it evolves over time more quickly than we can with a form like the novel.

For a long time I wanted to be a comic strip artist but when I started doing them in my teens they were getting really elaborate with tons of poses and a lot of information.

I've always felt that the comic strip medium stands equally beside all the other story telling mediums: novels, movies, stage plays, opera, you know, you name it.

At 16, I was drawing cartoons, and I wanted to carry on being a cartoonist.

There are artists who are writers, but there was no such thing as cartoons that were written by somebody who couldn't draw.

You can write a little and can draw a little, but there's necessarily a limitation on both in a comic strip, since it appears in such a tiny space.

For whatever crispness and animation my writing has I give some credit to the cartoonist manque.

We're having the first computer-generated comic strip in the United States.

Cartoonists' dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw.

I think you can do anything with comics that you could do in just about any art form.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

But to me what seems to be missing in a lot of portfolios is Cartooning.

Graphic novels are such a visually creative world - it's really interesting what they can do in one sketch. Now I'm hooked.

One of the things about comics is people can linger on images and words as long as they want.

Comics is a language. It's a language most people understand intuitively.

I had been drawing my weekly comic strip, 'Life in Hell,' for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was developing 'The Tracey Ullman Show' for the brand-new Fox network. He wanted me to come in and pitch an idea for doing little cartoons on that show.

It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing.

Cartooning is for people who can't quite draw and can't quite write. You combine the two half-talents and come up with a career.

But again, I put in my time with Marvel and DC so there was that period of my life of trying to learn how to draw and tell stories in a proper fashion.

Comics don't work without the visuals, obviously.

When I was a kid, I could draw, and my ambition was to be a cartoonist. I wanted to draw comics. But I also liked newspaper comics.

None of the established museums were treating cartoons seriously. It was considered a lesser art or no art at all, just a way to sell newspapers. Even the syndicates who were dedicated to the cartoons were throwing them out, figuring they had no value after they were printed.

I've always said that what cartoonists do is create friends for readers.

Don Martin was the one who really stood out. I really always loved his work. He was such a great artist.