Joseph Barbera Quotes

#1. Making cartoons means very hard work at every step of the way, but creating a successful cartoon character is the hardest work of all.

Joseph Barbera

#2. I was convinced there as only one actor to play Templeton the Rat, and that was Tony Randall.

Joseph Barbera

#3. Despite the rejection, and in violation of all the rules, I came back year after year.

Joseph Barbera

#4. In those days, boxing was very glamorous and romantic. You listened to fights on the radio, and a good announcer made it seem like a contest between gladiators.

Joseph Barbera

#5. I have spent a lot of years on the outside looking in.

Joseph Barbera

#6. Not once in six years did I make it to the office by 9 on the dot.

Joseph Barbera

#7. Friends don't necessarily made good business or creative partners.

Joseph Barbera

#8. Parents look at me like I'm somebody pretty important, and say, We were raised on your characters, and now we're enjoying them all over again with our children.

Joseph Barbera

#9. Publicity gets more than a little tiring. You want it, you need it, you crave it, and you're scared as hell when it stops.

Joseph Barbera

#10. What the real world of 1941 needed most was the release and relief provided by laughter.

Joseph Barbera

#11. Among the great glories of the MGM lot were the vast outdoor sets that had been constructed over the years.

Joseph Barbera

#12. My last days at MGM were like the fall of the Roman Empire in fast motion.

Joseph Barbera

#13. Ted Turner sailed into the meeting, and I mean sailed. He holds himself as if he were at the helm of his sailboat, in the process of winning the race.

Joseph Barbera

#14. I never got tired of Tom and Jerry, but I did have a dream of doing more with my life than making cartoons.

Joseph Barbera

#15. The Christmas parties were orgies of drinking and singing and groping and pawing. Cartoon staffers invested their own money in preparatory liquor.

Joseph Barbera

#16. While I have never been a regular churchgoer, I'm anything but immune to the power and the majesty of the religious experience.

Joseph Barbera

#17. High-level, big-deal publicity has a way of getting old for me, but what never fails to thrill me is when I make personal appearances.

Joseph Barbera

#18. When animators weren't sleeping, they were drinking.

Joseph Barbera

#19. Los Angeles was an impression of failure, of disappointment, of despair, and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought.

Joseph Barbera

#20. I was 82 years old before Who's Who thought I was enough of a big shot to do a piece on me.

Joseph Barbera

#21. Bill Hanna and I owe an awful lot to television, but we both got our start and built the first phase of our partnership in the movies.

Joseph Barbera

#22. I cannot say who, precisely, came up with the idea of a Stone Age family.

Joseph Barbera

#23. After I had done a handful of cartoons I was satisfied with, I started submitting them to the magazines.

Joseph Barbera

#24. I learned long ago to accept the fact that not everything I create will see the light of day.

Joseph Barbera

#25. Faced with the choice of enduring a bad toothache or going to the dentist, we generally tried to ride out the bad tooth.

Joseph Barbera

#26. You keep pitching. Most of the pitches run wild. A few are caught.

Joseph Barbera

#27. Except for me, no one in my family could draw.

Joseph Barbera

#28. One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.

Joseph Barbera

#29. My marriage had been impulsive. That marriage should have been short-lived instead of the 23 years it spanned.

Joseph Barbera

#30. What about Mickey Mouse? Disney tried very hard to make him a star. But Mickey Mouse is more of a symbol than a real character.

Joseph Barbera

#31. I first pitched the idea of doing a series of cartoons based on Bible stories. They didn't much like it.

Joseph Barbera

#32. I hope we don't get to the point where we have to have the cat stop chasing the mouse to teach him glassblowing and basket weaving.

Joseph Barbera

#33. That's what keeps me going: dreaming, inventing, then hoping and dreaming some more in order to keep dreaming.

Joseph Barbera

#34. I don't know that I spent any more time alone than any other kid, but being by myself never bothered me.

Joseph Barbera

#35. My biggest kick comes from the individual fans I run into. Middle-aged men ask me when we're going to do more Johnny Quest cartoons.

Joseph Barbera

#36. There is no law that says a man who earned a hundred million dollars in his first half-dozen years on the job has to be a decent human being, but Mike Eisner is that and more.

Joseph Barbera

#37. I don't know anyone who enjoys going to the hospital. To help remedy this, I got an idea to create what a Laugh Room in the pediatric ward of hospitals.

Joseph Barbera

#38. I hate fishing, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to hike when you can get in the car and drive.

Joseph Barbera

#39. So the stock market could have a negative wealth effect and weigh on capital spending, but a sharp decline in long-term interest rates would be an important counterweight.

Joseph Barbera

#40. Creating fantasy is a very personal thing, but you can't take the process too personally.

Joseph Barbera