Bruce Eric Kaplan Quotes
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My mother always bought our birthday gifts.
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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.
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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.
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James Thurber was an inspiration because his drawings were so primitive. I am self-taught - I didn't go to art school - so I thought when I started doing them, 'If James Thurber can be a cartoonist, I can,' because his stuff is very raw.
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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.
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I had always wanted to do a collection of cartoons, but you have to wait until someone is actually interested.
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I thought about trying to do a strip. I even tried to do it, but I felt I didn't have the voice. Even though I liked that form, I didn't think I thought in the form of the three panels.
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We only got clothing once a year, like, right before school began. It's like, that's when you got your clothing.
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When I'm on the set, I'll come up with ideas if I'm sort of just between responsibilities, because there's a lot of sitting around on set. Invariably, though, the stuff I come up with on the set tends to be bad.
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In New York, all the crews read 'The New Yorker.' In Los Angeles, they don't know from 'The New Yorker.'
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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.
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When I was a kid, I would be watching TV shows like, you know, like 'Get Smart' and be like, 'That's what being an adult is.'
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I go through my day remembering things like telephone cords.
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In many ways, cartooning is my therapy. I've always said they're like my diaries. It's thoughts and feelings and things I've seen on any particular day.
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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.
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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.
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I'm continually working on myself. Nothing ever actually works.
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Actually, I think that 'Seinfeld' tackles the same kinds of issues as 'Six Feet Under,' just in a different way.
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I started doing a Twitter feed when my father was dying. I was very distracted, preoccupied. It was upsetting.
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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.
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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.
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One identity is as a television writer, which is very classically Southern California, but another of my personae is as a New Yorker cartoonist.
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We are all just little dolls of ourselves. Who occasionally pull back the curtains to reveal the real us.
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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.