The amazing thing about Freak Out! was that there was nothing quite like it in rock 'n roll at the time. It was really simultaneously crude and ugly, and incredibly sophisticated. The Beatles were funny, but there was nothing with the kind of sneer that you could feel in the music of Frank Zappa.

There's always room out there for the hand-drawn image. I personally like the imperfection of hand drawing as opposed to the slick look of computer animation. But you can do good stuff either way. The Pixar movies are amazing in what they do, but there's plenty of independent animators who are doing really amazing things as well.

The thing that makes me happiest about Simpsons Illustrated are all the drawings that we get from readers. I wish we could print them all. They're really imaginative. They show a lot of hard work.

I didn't lie, I was writing fiction with my mouth.

English? Who needs that? I'm never going to England.

My life changed when I was able to not only get seated in nice restaurants, I was given free appetizers. That was like, "Oh, my God, I've arrived".

You just have to keep in mind that the important relationship is the relationship with the audience. That's what I try to do. Everything else is secondary.