Quotes from Bruce Eric Kaplan

As an adult, it's hard for me to remember my mother before her sickness. But if I go back into childhood, I can access that.

I started trying to be a writer and failed for years. I tried novels, short stories, sitcoms, movies, plays, anything. And then, to support myself, I had millions of jobs on the fringes of show business.

It was memorable the first time 'The New Yorker' bought a cartoon from me. I had been sending them batches for years every week, and they didn't respond to them.

In New York, all the crews read 'The New Yorker.' In Los Angeles, they don't know from 'The New Yorker.'

I read the 'New Yorker' when I was a kid. I used to love the cartoons and pick the cartoons out of the library, so I felt I knew the world of their cartoons.

One identity is as a television writer, which is very classically Southern California, but another of my personae is as a New Yorker cartoonist.

I am assuming my father learned at an early age that there is nothing more dangerous than showing your true self. I think a lot of us learn that, and it actually may be true.

I love graduation speeches. I have always loved them I will always love them.

I loved Charles Addams more than anything. Still love him.

I started doing a Twitter feed when my father was dying. I was very distracted, preoccupied. It was upsetting.

Graduation speeches force you to reflect. They are about consciousness. Nothing is better than consciousness.

I've sat through boring speeches; didn't get up and leave.

What I like about graduation speeches is that they're an opportunity for someone to make sense of their life and to impart that wisdom to someone else. It's like a sanctioned self-help moment.

In L.A., you can put out a craft-service table anywhere, and it's no big deal. But in New York, people who walk by it on the street get really angry about it.

In Los Angeles, it's always nice out. In New York, it can be nice out or horrifying. You really have no idea what you're going to get on any given day.

My mother couldn't take having three boys. She was extremely jumpy, to say the least. Any noise startled her. The sound of a pot dropping on the ground could make her hit the ceiling.

It's self-soothing for me to draw. So if I'm upset, drawing makes me less upset.

There was never any butter in our home. Just margarine. My parents acted like butter was lethal. I don't think I ever saw either one have a piece of butter. I would go over to friends' houses and down sticks of butter.

We only got clothing once a year, like, right before school began. It's like, that's when you got your clothing.

Sometimes I'll be reading something online and just get so frustrated because of what people are saying.

In television writing, you want to hear what the characters say as opposed to giving them something to say. It's the same with the cartoons.

Of course I loved 'I Love Lucy' and saw every episode over and over again. I found it heartbreaking that Ricky got to be famous and have an exciting life at the Tropicana while Lucy was stuck in that terrible apartment with the Mertzes.