Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was planning on being a starving artist.
I don't want to be the Pied Piper of fast food.
For some reason, not many women go into cartooning.
We're always aiming for storytelling that feels a bit surreal.
You don't want to work on a job where you're looking at your watch.
Everybody's got some fascination with undersea life, don't you think?
The morality we all grew up with and are accustomed to is what feels right.
Obviously, we're never going to say what the Krabby Patty secret formula is.
I wanted people to hear directly from me that I have been diagnosed with ALS.
I think the source of SpongeBob's humour is classic, and that's always appealing.
It's not like the computer magically does it for you. Animation just takes forever.
'The Simpsons' is a tough act to follow, so I thought it was best not to do what they do.
SpongeBob is a kid living an adult life. He has a job. Kids think being a fry cook is a great job.
I see SpongeBob on ice-cream trucks a lot, and I've got bootleg SpongeBob merchandise from Mexico.
A natural sponge is not as funny. A square sponge also fit that squeaky-clean idea I was going for.
I never imagined that I'd end up in animation, but marine biology and art collided, and here we are!
When SpongeBob's perseverance shines through, and you root for him - that's when the show is working.
To do a 75-minute movie about SpongeBob wanting to make some jellyfish jelly would be a mistake, I think.
SpongeBob is just made of cellulose, but he has parents who are natural sponges - he got the square gene.
I was just looking at a packet that had SpongeBob thong underwear, so it goes farther than I would imagine.
In the '70s, as a kid, someone took me to a Tournee of Animation festival at the L.A. County Museum of Art.
SpongeBob represents idiocy. He is dumb. Patrick is dumb. Mr. Krabs is greedy. Squidward is a snob and vain.
SpongeBob is an innocent, and people respond to an innocent. I don't think it matters if you're young or old.
The essence of the show is that SpongeBob is an innocent in a world of jaded characters. The rest is absurd packaging.
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.
I was into Jacques Cousteau as a kid and started scuba-diving around 14, which blew my mind. It was all colour, another world.
I am an ocean lover and fish watcher and had studied marine biology and even taught marine sciences before I got into animation.
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.
I just kind of figured that the marine biology would be a career, and the art would be something I did for my own self-expression.
I studied marine biology, even taught marine science before I got into animation, so I had an interest in that field and those animals.
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.
I wanted to do a show about a character that was an innocent, and so I focused on a sea sponge because it's a funny animal, a strange one.
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.
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.
I pitched the idea that SpongeBob and Patrick learn a swearword. Everyone said no. I couldn't even use a bleep. So I used a dolphin sound instead.
I never really imagined a show about a sponge going past our first season. I thought maybe we'd have a cult following, and we'd be gone after one season.
I think it's amusing to watch a naive, well-meaning character kind of undo more cynical characters - kind of like watching Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin.
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.
When you set out to do a show about a sponge, you can't anticipate this kind of craze. We just try to make ourselves laugh, then ask ourselves if it's appropriate for children.
I've always been interested in art and making things, but I chose not to go to art school because I thought I needed to do something else. Art was a tough way to make a living.
In the spring of 1996, I was working for Nickelodeon on a show called 'Rocko's Modern Life,' and I was interested at the time in doing a show about the ocean, an undersea show.
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.
I studied natural resources planning and thought I could get a job at some marine park. But I was great at art and so-so at marine biology. It's funny how the two eventually came together.
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 do think that the attitude of the show is about tolerance. Everybody is different, and the show embraces that. The character SpongeBob is an oddball. He's kind of weird, but he's kind of special.
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.
I'm hoping that fans will enjoy finally having a 'SpongeBob' comic book from me. All the stories will be original and always true to the humor, characters, and universe of the 'SpongeBob SquarePants' series.
You have to imagine you write a show about a sponge and you think that maybe a few people will think it is funny, some college students, but it takes off. It is truly shocking - to the point where it is bizarre.
The characters are likable. Even the villainous Plankton - he's still flawed, and you still root for him, in a way, and the style of humor is simple, and it's about human behavior, and everybody can identify with that.
I drew these natural sponges for a while and gave them googly eyes, and it didn't come together until I drew a sink sponge one day. I thought, 'This is the guy.' He's the square peg, literally, in this world of animals.