Billy West Quotes

It had more layers than an onion. These writers meant business. There was a level for everybody. Your major could be celestial mechanics, and there'd be celestial-mechanics jokes.

I got a liberal education. A white guy, rapping as Bugs Bunny, on a quintuple-platinum album.

Space Jam was weird because everybody has their own perception of what Bugs Bunny should sound like. Everybody. Somebody would just stick their head in the door and say, "He sounds too Jewish." Or, "He's too tough, he's off-putting. You gotta seduce kids, not scare them out the door."

I don't have that much of an ego where it's like "How dare you, you can't do something without me."

It's very hard to take a character out of nothing, and put a hook on it, especially because it's only sonic. Futurama is a sonic world, and everyone's attention is focused on that sound and that little cartoon image. You can change it.

If someone gave me the chance to create something, I put myself into it. I just want to try to do something that will last forever and that won't leave people saying, 'Gee, it could have been better, it could've been this, it could've been that.'

The only thing I have to say to people - try being the hero of your own world one day. Don't spend your life thinking about what somebody did or if they failed at this or if they did great at that or they got caught with a monkey, in a bathtub, having sex. You should at one point become the hero of your own world.

I didn't create Bugs Bunny. You know what I mean? I can't get mad because I'm the third-best Bugs Bunny in the world.

I don't get to watch Futurama, until it's on TV.

John Kricfalusi is very talented; he used to really piss me off. But I did good work, you know? The Ren & Stimpy show without me was totally unsuccessful. So if there's anybody listening out there with any doubts about what I can do for a show: Try me. The thing is, I wasn't about to stop doing a job.

I've always said that you can't be the new Mel Blanc by doing Mel Blanc's voice.

I'm not angry. Everybody thinks I'm so angry because I have a point of view. They're expecting me to just be all Smucker's Jam.

To me, it all comes down to things being character-driven. It's hard for me to look beyond that. CG and all this cool stuff - so be it. But to me, it pretty much begins and ends with character-driven plots rather than technologically-driven plots.

But the throat just kind of falls into line once you realize in your head what it is. You got to remember the musicality of a character you're going to do.

In a black-and-white world, back in the '50s, were voices from another era. All actors used to sound different. Robert Mitchum sounded different from John Wayne, and John Wayne sounded different from Clark Gable. They were like men's voices, but they weren't Everyman, it was them.

I'm not like a high intellectual. That's the thing.

Somebody's real voice is probably the hardest one that somebody could attempt.

Life is for the living. I was a little scared before surgery 'cause of the release you sign that says there's always a very small percent chance that you'll die during the operation.

Somebody's real voice is probably the hardest one that somebody could attempt. The characters are all, believe it or not, rooted in a reality of some sort. I've met and talked to people, and they're also fusions of showbiz periphery. But the best thing was, if you did your own voice and you were the star of the show - if it came to blows and they had you on the ropes and you had to leave, then they could just get someone to sound exactly like you.

You have to have some kind of power of observation, almost like a trained observer.

If everyone else is doing something, I have little or no interest in it. If you're known as this guy who can do any kind of sound or voice or whatever, somebody will go, "Do you do Christopher Walken?" "No." "Well, why not?" "Because everybody else in the world does it." My carpenter does Christopher Walken.

Well, I happen to have a love of vocal reproduction devices.

I'm not like a high intellectual.

I was basically a sound engineer, I produced radio shows and stuff and had to splice tape in the old days. And you knew a sloppy edit when you heard it, because I had enough of them. But that stuff takes the magic out of it, if you need to know everything. Then you become omnivorous. Everything is tender, and as soon as you burn it up, you're on to the next.

Even when I was coming through school I was a loner and I used to study music and listen to it and play it and play it, and I was in bands.

I did speak out about celebrities because I thought it was appalling. I thought that if the cartoon became popular, it was only going to last as long as the career of the people who are in it. They didn't make up timeless voices. They used their own. They brought nothing to the table, in other words. There was no alchemy. That's why a cartoon was so alluring, was that a human being went into a place and created this supernatural sound, or whatever sound it was supposed to be that was totally unlike their own, and did it in multiples.

I consider myself to be flawed, but I made it work. I'm not perfect. Anybody who thinks they are is whacked-out.

As long as I can apply my craft, I'm happy.

John Kricfalusi wanted me to quit the job when he got fired in 1992. But the problem there is that I wasn't his partner. I was a hired gun. And then people badmouth me for 10 years, like a rock in my shoe in that camp. It's a very small but active group of posters, as I've come to find out. But the thing is that I finally got to the point where, "Okay, I get you, I get it you don't like that I did what I did." But the thing was, the whole story was cockeyed. They said I put everybody out of work. No, I didn't. Everybody was going to be out of work if I didn't continue the Ren & Stimpy show.

Robert Mitchum sounded different from John Wayne, and John Wayne sounded different from Clark Gable.

Everybody's got a bully pulpit now, and everybody's mad. I don't blame people for being angry and frustrated about everything. I'm old, but I'm not pulling my pants up to my tits. I take deep breaths of air when I enter a room and celebrate the fact that I'm alive.

You watch people and study them the way an alien would.

Robin Williams understands sonic performances. He understands what it's like to change your voice up.

Tom Kenny is a master of changing a pubic hair this way or that way, and sounding like a totally different character.

I had people that were coming on my own website and attacking me. You know, they were like Hillary Clinton supporters? It was very ugly.

When I was a little kid, I saw a guy with one of those cancer clarinets, and I flipped out. I totally flipped out. I said to my mom, "Mom, what is that thing?" And she happened to know, too, which was the oddest thing. She said, "That's a Bell Telephone artificial larynx, for men that had their voice boxes removed because of cancer." I was like, "Wow." And I couldn't wait to get one. I didn't get one 'til I was all grown up and everything.