Quotes from Stephen Hillenburg

The essence of the show is that SpongeBob is an innocent in a world of jaded characters. The rest is absurd packaging.

I was always interested in the ocean and also in art. I had to figure out how to put the two together, but painting fish sounded boring.

Generally, we try not to write down to kids. We really just try to write a visual, character-driven cartoon that has a lot of slapstick and really appeals to us. I guess we are just lucky that other adults find that amusing, too.

On TV, it is more efficient to use voice-over people because it is really hard to get celebrity voices to recur in a series.

To be honest, there is a special gift for doing voice-overs, and the people who did the voices in the 'SpongeBob' cast are excellent at cartoon voice-overs, and they bring something extra to the reads.

Anyone who knows me knows that I will continue to work on 'SpongeBob SquarePants' and my other passions for as long as I am able.

For me personally, snorkeling in a cove in Hawaii, floating along, and looking at all the animals and the colors - I mean, that's pretty peaceful.

Laurel and Hardy are among my strongest influences, and I think they're perfect examples of two naive, kid-like characters that are still funny today. In fact, they're a lot like SpongeBob and Patrick, walking around in their own little world and causing a fine mess.

I don't want to be the Pied Piper of fast food.

I wanted to create a small town underwater where the characters were more like us than like fish. They have fire. They take walks. They drive. They have pets and holidays.

To do a 75-minute movie about SpongeBob wanting to make some jellyfish jelly would be a mistake, I think.

For some reason, not many women go into cartooning.

When I pitched the show, I made this special seashell. You could pick it up and hear me singing, 'Spongeboy, Spongeboy!' I also made an aquarium with Patrick planted on the side, SpongeBob sitting on a barrel, and Squidward inside. I wore a Hawaiian shirt. I don't know what they thought of it.

A lot of things came out of my interest in marine biology, like the fact that there are scallops that fly in the air, and in SpongeBob's world, scallops swim the same way in the ocean.

SpongeBob is a complete innocent - not an idiot. SpongeBob never fully realizes how stupid Patrick is. They're whipping themselves up into situations - that's always where the humor comes from.

I wanted people to hear directly from me that I have been diagnosed with ALS.

Everybody's got some fascination with undersea life, don't you think?

I always pushed back on doing long-form. I imagined SpongeBob as being simple, and I wanted to concentrate on character humor.

Twentysomethings thank me for their childhood... SpongeBob lives at the bottom of the sea, but he brings a lot of great stuff to the surface.

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

I thought, well, what about a show that stars undersea creatures, and some of the ones you rarely see animated. So, from there, I just started drawing different animals in a kind of a setting that was this nautical world. It's not realistic but sort of a fantastic environment.

SpongeBob is a kid living an adult life. He has a job. Kids think being a fry cook is a great job.

We wanted the humor to come from the characters and their world - you go down there to escape the world up here for a while. So when the crew would write jokes that would refer to American TV or culture, I'd just eliminate them because it just seemed odd that SpongeBob would know about it.

One night, I was really beat; we worked really late and went to get food at some takeout place. And I leaned over against this gumball machine, just exhausted, and there was a SpongeBob looking back at me. And it's just, like, 'Oh, brother.'