Quotes from Raphael Bob-Waksberg

I thought it would be a fun change of pace to do a show about a really sad, depressed character.

I kind of want to take the writer down a peg. I think there are a lot of pretentious writers in this business, which I am certainly one, in certain cases.

It's much easier for me to think in terms of character movement and emotion and story rather than, 'What are some wacky hijinks we can throw together?'

I was doing this really wacky sketch comedy but at the same time writing these dark, cerebral plays about characters coming to grips with their loneliness and heartbreak. My dream job has always been a way to combine the two. I would say 'BoJack Horseman' is the culmination of all of that.

I think we're so often, as writers, afraid of writing something that is less than perfect, and that fear paralyzes us. I'm a big fan of writing less than perfect things.

I think 'BoJack' is definitely very much about kind of the burdens of being comfortable.

I think that, as a show creator, you have to be very careful about what messages you're putting out into the world. That is a not always popular thing to suggest, because it feels very Tipper Gore-y, perhaps.

There was a warm and encouraging environment at home. My self-loathing and neuroticism are not because of my upbringing.

I don't want the government to be censoring people, I don't think there should be censoring boards, but I think that means that we the artists need to be very careful about what we're putting out and what were saying and how we're saying it. And I don't think we're being as careful as we should be.

For me as an audience member, it makes the characters more relatable and interesting if they're evolving and changing - it makes them feel more real in a way. But not every cartoon is trying to be real.

The caustic style of 'Archer' was really on my mind when I was first doing 'BoJack' - perhaps too much!

I wanted BoJack to be more of a cautionary figure than someone that you aspire to be.

I have a lot of affection for those old shows. You can put on an episode of 'Full House' or 'Family Matters' or 'Growing Pains' now and I'll watch it. And I'll totally enjoy it.

A lot of Christmas episodes of comedies are comedies trying to be dramas.

When you surround yourself with white people, you continue to hire white people, and when you make an effort to hire people of color, that does bring in different stories and different people.

That's all life is, I guess. Just a bunch of riffs. Look at me: I'm wearing a tie. Why am I wearing a tie? It's because I saw an adult wear a tie and I thought, Oh, that's what people do. We're all just trying to be what an adult is.

One of the things that set us apart early on, as opposed to other animated shows, was the fact that 'Bojack' was continuous and serialized.

In 'Bojack,' at least at first, we had to couch some of the sadder or weirder or introspective stuff we were doing in the costume of a typical adult animated comedy. With 'Undone,' it felt like we'd outgrown that expectation.

I'm very interested in telling darker stories that maybe you are not used to seeing in animation. Especially because in animation you don't see those kind of stories.

Whenever I talk about how good season two of 'The Comeback' is, people ask, 'Do I have to see season one?' And I say, 'You get to see season one.'

I think I am someone who is very interested in structure and different ways of delivering jokes.

Humor was a big part of my childhood. My family was full of comedians. We'd sit around the dinner table and try to one-up each other. It sometimes ended in tears, but usually in laughter.

A lot of the hesitancy to talk about the industry in real, concrete terms is not because of people being afraid of biting the hand that feeds them, and more about the fear that people in the middle of the country will not be interested.

There's a widening of an idea of what a TV show can be or how it can be told, and that's partially in the diversity of the creators and the stories. Because there are so many new networks and streaming services popping up every day that need more content, there are more opportunities to take risks.