Simpsons Springfield Quotes

What about The Simpsons, you ask? I knew more about Springfield than I knew about my own city.

A lot of our writers, like Conan O'Brien, moved on to other things

We still couldn’t use “ass” any way we pleased. In one script, we had the phrase “up his ass”; Fox censors asked us to change it to “in his ass.” That seemed worse, but we did as they asked.

God always listens to my prayers, then does the exact opposite.

THEIR GRANDKIDS MAKE THEM DO IT. This was the case with George Harrison, and it made us all feel very old.

So Smithers is the first man in history to go from black and straight to white and gay. The second was Michael Jackson.

I went into college knowing Latin and calculus. After four years, I'd forgotten them both. Blame the apple bong for that.

featured an eight-year-old boy who saved his friend who was choking to death. When asked where he learned the Heimlich, he said, “It was on a poster on The Simpsons.” True story.

Our team of Korean animators hand-draws twenty-four thousand cels to make one episode of The Simpsons; these days, color is added by computer, but for the first decade of the show, each cel had to be hand-painted.

I took all this criticism very personally, thinking I was bringing about America’s moral decay. So I decided to write children’s books. This was a stretch for me, because I hate children. But, Dr. Seuss hated children. So did Hans Christian Andersen. Lewis Carroll loved children in a way that’s illegal in forty-eight states. (I mentioned this in a lecture, and someone asked, “What are the two states where it’s okay?” That’s how I met R. Kelly.)

We didn’t even have a real office at the time. The studio had so little faith in us, they housed us in a trailer. I assumed that if the show failed, they’d slowly back the trailer up to the Pacific and drown the writers like rats.

If a giant sinkhole opened up and swallowed Harvard University, I’d think, Poor sinkhole. I spent four years at Harvard and I hated the place. I’m not alone: In a 2006 poll, the Boston Globe ranked schools in terms of fun and social life. Harvard came in fifth . . . from the bottom. Amazing. I couldn’t imagine four schools less fun than Harvard. But then I saw the list. The four schools ranked below us were: Guantanamo Tech Chernobyl Community College The University of California at Aleppo, and Cornell

The Worst Man in Australia Australians love The Simpsons, except, naturally, the episode where the family goes there. That episode was condemned in the Australian parliament, which is a Hooters, by the way. They didn’t object to us saying the Australian penal system involved kicking offenders with a giant boot, or that their prime minister’s office was an inner tube in a pond. Nope. What they didn’t like was our cast’s attempt at doing an Australian accent. Mind you, the true Australian accent is semi-incomprehensible

This was the tedious process by which I found great writers, like Greg Daniels (creator of The Office) and Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, who three years later had my job running the show. In both cases, they had written pitch-perfect Seinfeld scripts. Greg’s was set entirely in a single parking space and was so good that Seinfeld actually produced it. Bill and Josh’s script had George Costanza accidentally swallowing a jagged piece of glass at a party; all the guests stay for hours, waiting to see if George “passes” the glass safely. It was cringe comedy at its very best.

There were three great comedians in my formative years—Bill Cosby, Bill Murray, and Richard Pryor—and they wrecked comedy for a generation. How? By never saying anything funny. You can quote a Steve Martin joke, or a Rodney Dangerfield line, but Pryor, Cosby, and Murray? The things they said were funny only when they said them. In Cosby’s case, it didn’t even need to be sentences: “The thing of the thing puts the milk in the toast, and ha, ha, ha!” It was gibberish and America loved it. The problem was that they inspired a generation of comedians who tried coasting on personality—they were all attitude and no jokes. It was also a time when comedy stars didn’t seem to care. Bill Murray made some lousy movies; Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy made even more; and any script that was too lame for these guys, Chevy Chase made. These were smart people—they had to know how bad these films were, but they just grabbed a paycheck and did them. Most of these comic actors started as writers—they could have written their own scripts, but they rarely bothered. Then, at the end of a decade of lazy comedy and half-baked material, The Simpsons came along. We cared about jokes, and we worked endless hours to cram as many into a show as possible. I’m not sure we can take all the credit, but TV and movies started trying harder. Jokes were back. Shows like 30 Rock and Arrested Development demanded that you pay attention. These days, comedy stars like Seth Rogen, Amy Schumer, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, and Jonah Hill actually write the comedies they star in.

There is a guy living in Macon, Georgia, whose name is Homer Simpson . . . and he works in a nuclear power plant! That poor guy. Having to live in Macon, Georgia.

and I use that term precisely. You can understand exactly one-half of what an Australian person says. Generally, it’s the first half: “You know, if I was running your Congress I’d langa danga langa danga danga.” But sometimes you can follow only the second half: “Langa danga langa danga and I woke up with a dead hooker covered in shrimp.” I’ve made six wonderful trips Down Under and have met only one local who didn’t love The Simpsons—he was my tour guide to the city of Cairns. What follows is a verbatim transcript from the long day we spent together:

He also cut another bit we liked—a character named Gravy Wallace who loved gravy. That was it—Gravy Wallace loved gravy. Maybe the showrunner was right and it was stupid. But maybe Gravy could’ve been the next Disco Stu.

I once asked her, after reading a Dixie cup riddle, “What’s worse than finding a worm in an apple?” The cup’s answer was “Finding half a worm in an apple.” My grandma Rosie’s answer? “Having someone shove an umbrella up your tuchis . . . and then open it.

A few years later, my wife and I were visiting Iran. Why? Because our idea of a vacation is most people’s idea of a hostage situation. If refugees want to get out of a place, we want to go there.

A minister in Iowa burned the book in his church parking lot. (This is not as bad as it sounds—before they can burn it, they’ve got to buy it.)

I began to think a joke was not truly good unless someone got hit for telling it.

Comedy, like composting, involves smart recycling.

Seinfeld’s a hit? Give him a wife, you’ve got Mad About You. Throw in some kids—it’s Everybody Loves Raymond. Make it suck—and it’s Home Improvement.

I got the Simpsons job the same way I got a wife: I was not the first choice, but I was available.

someone turned our episode into an off-Broadway musical, Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, a story of some postapocalyptic survivors who share only one cultural link: the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons. They recreate the script and perform it as a traveling theater troupe. In act 2 we see their play seventy-five years later: it’s become as ritualized and bizarre as a Greek Orthodox Mass. I’m

It takes us nine months, from concept to finished product, to make a single episode of The Simpsons.

21–23: Nerd.

One thing to remember about this prediction: “President Trump” was the punchline to the setup, “What’s the dumbest thing we could imagine America doing?” When the news of the world becomes jokes on The Simpsons, that’s satire. But when jokes on The Simpsons become the news of the world—well, that’s just fucked up.