“I think it's very important to have both cartoons and more realistic structures. The cartoons have the power of representing the essential very often, but have this intrinsic weakness of being in a certain sense predictable.”

“A question I have often asked is, ‘What would an inoffensive political cartoon look like?’ What would a respectful cartoon look like? The form requires disrespect and so if we are going to have in the world things like cartoons and satire, we just have to accept it as part of the price of freedom.”

“Puppets have the same sort of graceful aging that cartoon characters have.”

“I take great pride in the artistic development of cartoons. Our characters are made to go through emotions which a few short years ago would have seemed impossible to secure with a cartoon character. Some of the action produced in the finished cartoon of today is more graceful than anything possible for a human to do.”

“If you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade a real change-maker represents a real threat. So your only option is to create a cartoon, a cartoon alternative, then run against the cartoon. Cartoons are two- dimensional, they’re easy to absorb. Life in the real world is complicated and real change is hard. And a lot of people even think it’s boring.”

“There is no right in the world not to be offended. That right simply doesn’t exist. In a free society, an open society, people have strong opinions, and these opinions very often clash. In a democracy, we have to learn to deal with this. And this is true about novels, it’s true about cartoons, it’s true about all these products.”

“The subject [of Stalin's death] permitted a rare blend of invective and speculation—both Hearst papers, as I recall, ran cartoons of Stalin being rebuffed at the gates of Heaven, where Hearst had no correspondents—and I have seldom enjoyed a week of newspaper reading more.”

“I think it's quite enough to simply be sarcastic about something. I like to do that quite a lot, and it's one of my favorite things to look at. That's why I think there's a thin line between melodrama and satire, and I like to dance across that line sometimes. I like the story to take a very funny turn or have a character who is much more of a cartoon.”

“b>Interviewer: Have you ever attended a mime school?
Brian: Nop. Never. I used to watch a lot of cartoons and the Muppets Show and that's why I make the funny faces. So it was all cartoon and Jim Henson.”

“I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard.”