Bruce Eric Kaplan

My cartoon life is in my office, and it's very separate and getting very in my own head. My television life is I'm begging one of the actors to say the line in the way I'd like them to. ”

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. ”

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. ”

I used cartoons as diaries. I still do. They're my way of figuring out the world, what's happening to me or what I'm thinking about. ”

Traditionally, the only way I come up with cartoons is by sitting at my desk and thinking. ”

No, I never - no one ever - I never learned anything when I was a kid. Honestly, my parents had nothing to tell me - like, no wisdom, nothing. ”

I'm continually working on myself. Nothing ever actually works. ”

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. ”

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. ”

One quintessential moment in time is when you're 22, when you graduate college. And then another quintessential time is as a middle-age man. That's the convergence. ”