Top 55 Simpsons Quotes

I loved ‘The Simpsons‘ because it didn’t talk down to its audience.

We went to church twice a week. My parents were employed in ministry; we prayed before dinner. We rollerbladed in the summer. We were allowed to watch the ‘Simpsons.’ I fought with my younger brother over Legos.

I’m lucky that I can walk down the street, and maybe one person will recognise me from ‘The Simpsons,’ and another person will recognise me from ‘Spinal Tap,’ and it’s always surprising.

I always say that ‘Futurama’ is real, and ‘The Simpsons’ is fiction.

‘The Simpsons’ money got bigger and bigger. When I left ‘The Simpsons’, no one thought that this thing was going to still be around. It’s the cumulative effect. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, 25 years later, and it’s still coming in.’

I think the cartoons that they’re children are watching, particularly ‘The Simpsons,’ they’re OK. I think that the adult audience is making much too much of the danger that they imply. That’s not the case. The danger for children today, honey, is the news. Keep them away from news on television.

There’s not a fortune to be made doing voiceover work unless you‘re one of the main voices on The Simpsons. See, there’s The Simpsons, and then there’s everything else.

On ‘The Simpsons,’ I will say that we definitely like to comment on what’s going on in the world, and we try to be funny. If we can figure out a way of being funny about it, then we’ve gone part of the way of accomplishing our task.

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

‘The Simpsons’ from the very beginning was based on our memories of brash ’60s sitcoms – you had a main title theme that was bombastic and grabbed your attention – and when you look at TV shows of the 1970s and ’80s, things got very mild and toned down and… obsequious.

The thing that makes me happiest about Simpsons Illustrated are all the drawings that we get from readers. I wish we could print them all. They’re really imaginative. They show a lot of hard work.

So I’m one of the few celebrities that got to do a repeat performance on ‘The Simpsons,’ which I’m very flattered by.

Because good writing in a TV cartoon is so rare, I think the animation on The Simpsons is often overlooked.

I grew up watching ‘The Office‘ and ‘Father Ted’ and all the British things at that time – ‘The Royle Family’ – and the American ones like ‘Friends,’ ‘Frasier’ and ‘The Simpsons.’

After ‘Nikki’ and ‘Steve Harvey,’ I had written on a show called ‘The Oblongs,’ which was pretty well respected and had a lot of ‘Simpsons’ writers on it. So I was a TV writer with an interesting voice at that moment.

Growing up, I remember my parents feeling a little wary of ‘The Simpsons.’ This was the late eighties, and there was a wave of articles about TV shows that were bad for America. Then we all started watching it and loved it.

‘The Simpsons’ is still my favorite show. I have a really strong connection to it.

I’m not even Indian-American: I’m Indian-Indian. Everybody expected me to have henna and a nose pin and talk in an accent like Apu from ‘The Simpsons.’ I was nervous because I wasn’t sure if America was ready for a lead that looked like me.

The humor is essentially dark for a cartoon and sophisticated. But at the same time, being a cartoon gives the writers more freedom than in a normal sitcom. It always pushes the line that, despite human failings, the Simpsons are really decent people.

Typically in animation, the characters exist in a kind of stasis. Look at ‘The Simpsons’ – they never age, the baby never grows up – or ‘Peanuts‘ – the kids never grow up, they always stay the same age.

Early on in my career, I was often the only woman in the room, writing for shows like ‘Late Night with David Letterman,’ ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘Newhart,’ and ‘Coach,’ and sometimes I’d feel like I didn’t belong.

Anybody in animation today would be lying if they said they weren’t somehow influenced by ‘The Simpsons’ to a certain degree. Except for the shows that go out of their way to look as far from ‘The Simpsons’ as possible.

The Simpsons can go anywhere in the world and not worry about any budgetary issues. However, even when the show has had its run, I think the characters can go on in perpetuity.

Basically, we used to have a rule at ‘Saturday Night Live‘ that you’re not allowed to bring up ‘The Simpsons’ at the rewrite table, because ‘The Simpsons’ has done every joke there is. Every week there would be guys going, ‘The Simpsons did that.’ I go, ‘C’mon.’ And ‘South Park,’ too.

The conundrum that I face on a daily basis is that I have two sons who have grown up watching ‘The Simpsons,’ so they know exactly what buttons to push. They know how Bart irritates Homer, and they use these lines against me to tell me that I’m not funny anymore.

I’m kind of a dork. I don’t have much game. I’m not particularly comfortable in bars or clubs. I much prefer being home playing Scrabble, having dinner with a couple friends, going to see a movie, or losing a whole weekend to Season 14 of Law and Order or The Simpsons.

Between ‘Futurama’ and ‘Simpsons,’ I’m able to work with the voices of Michael Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, and the cast of ‘Star Trek.’ It’s great, you know; it’s great to work with such talented people.

Our solution on ‘The Simpsons’ is to do jokes that people who have an education, or some frame of reference, can get. And for the ones who don’t, it doesn’t matter, because we have Homer banging his head and saying, ‘D’oh!’

I transplanted my brain into ‘HQ’ and that’s where the dark corners of my mind got exposed: Pop culture, ’90s baseball, ‘Simpsons,’ ‘Seinfeld,’ ‘Mr. Show,’ Phish, Grateful Dead.

Are the Simpsons cool? They are, and that is crude 2D animation.

You look at shows like The Simpsons or Larry Sanders or Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld, they’re really sophisticated shows that we all love back home.

We did ‘The Simpsons Movie,’ which took almost four years; it was the same people that do the TV show, and it just killed us. So that’s why there hasn’t been a second movie. But I imagine if the show ever does go off the air, they’ll start doing movies.

‘The Simpsons’ is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but who drive you completely crazy.

The thing about a cartoon is, you can do whatever you want. The tightrope that we are walking on ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Futurama’ is ‘How do you continue to surprise the audience, but make them good surprises?’ Not every surprise is good, but you want to continue jolting people.

I think when ‘The Simpsons’ first came on, there was an uproar. People got used to it. They realized the show’s really funny, it’s got a heart, so I think it’s pretty safe.

I grew up poor. To me, interior decorating is my big-screen TV, my couch and my Simpsons poster.

I like ‘The Simpsons’ like everybody else. But yeah – people think I’ll always be super intense.

With The Simpsons you can go back to work with a keen heart.

When it moved to Friday night it disappeared, when they find another show that can do what The Simpsons does, they will be delighted to do cancel The Simpsons.

‘Monty Python‘ and ‘The Simpsons’ have ruined comedy for writers for the rest of our lives.

I think about ‘The Simpsons,’ which has been going on for 25 years. Homer is still in his late 30’s. Lisa is 8, Bart is 10. Their stories are told. Yet the series keeps going on and on like a zombie that won‘t lie down and die. That feels forced and unnatural. The characters never change, grow, age.

My nana used to tape ‘The Simpsons’ when it aired on Sky. We’d get the VHS tapes – my dad would courier them from Nana’s house to us – and we’d watch them on Sunday nights.

A whole generation was raised to learn about comedy from ‘The Simpsons.’ To get to be in a booth with Homer and Marge and be in Springfield – it was unimaginable the emotions that I felt.

The success of ‘The Simpsons’ really opened doors. It showed that if you were working in animation you didn’t necessarily have to be working in kids’ television.

‘The Simpsons’ basically – and ‘Futurama’ – are really smart shows. They’re kind of disguised as these goofy animated sitcoms, but the references within the shows, if you’re paying attention, are pretty smart and pretty sophisticated.

Yeah, my first love was ‘The Simpsons,’ but in terms of movies and stuff, I loved ‘Back To The Future,’ I loved ‘Jurassic Park,’ I loved ‘The Truman Show.’

I’ll tell you what ‘The Simpsons’ is really good at. They’ll describe something, you don’t see it, and it’s funnier when you describe it.

The Simpsons has shaped my psychology to a degree one would usually attribute to a parent, or a particularly devout upbringing. I am a zealot.

The Simpsons take up so little time that I’m able to do other things as well.

That guy in ‘The Simpsons’ – I love Groundskeeper Willie.

That’s been the case for decades. ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘King of the Hill‘ – they do the preproduction in America, and the production is in Korea or in some cases China, or occasionally Japan or India.

In my cranky old age, I actually prefer recording alone now, on ‘The Simpsons,’ for example, because I find that the director can just focus on what I’m doing and I can do a lot of variations. A lot of times, when I record with a group, I’ll stay after class for another hour or two.

Sometimes people get mad at The Simpsons’ subversive story telling, but there’s another message in there, which is a celebration of making wild, funny stories.

Maybe it’ll be like ‘The Simpsons,’ and everybody will remain unchanged. Maybe that’s what ‘Glee‘s about. Maybe this is kind of a stasis show. I don’t know.

‘The Simpsons’ is a tough act to follow, so I thought it was best not to do what they do.