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.
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
3.
I cannot say who, precisely, came up with the idea of a Stone Age family.
Joseph Barbera
4.
That's what keeps me going: dreaming, inventing, then hoping and dreaming some more in order to keep dreaming.
Joseph Barbera
5.
My marriage had been impulsive. That marriage should have been short-lived instead of the 23 years it spanned.
Joseph Barbera
6.
I learned long ago to accept the fact that not everything I create will see the light of day.
Joseph Barbera
7.
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
8.
Los Angeles was an impression of failure, of disappointment, of despair, and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought.
Joseph Barbera
9.
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
10.
Creating fantasy is a very personal thing, but you can't take the process too personally.
Joseph Barbera
11.
Despite the rejection, and in violation of all the rules, I came back year after year.
Joseph Barbera
12.
My last days at MGM were like the fall of the Roman Empire in fast motion.
Joseph Barbera
13.
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
14.
I have spent a lot of years on the outside looking in.
Joseph Barbera
15.
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
16.
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
17.
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
18.
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
19.
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
20.
Except for me, no one in my family could draw.
Joseph Barbera
21.
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
22.
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
23.
I was convinced there as only one actor to play Templeton the Rat, and that was Tony Randall.
Joseph Barbera
24.
Not once in six years did I make it to the office by 9 on the dot.
Joseph Barbera
25.
I don't know that I spent any more time alone than any other kid, but being by myself never bothered me.
Joseph Barbera
26.
After I had done a handful of cartoons I was satisfied with, I started submitting them to the magazines.
Joseph Barbera
27.
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
28.
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
29.
Among the great glories of the MGM lot were the vast outdoor sets that had been constructed over the years.
Joseph Barbera
30.
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
31.
The Christmas parties were orgies of drinking and singing and groping and pawing. Cartoon staffers invested their own money in preparatory liquor.
Joseph Barbera
32.
What the real world of 1941 needed most was the release and relief provided by laughter.
Joseph Barbera
33.
One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.
Joseph Barbera
34.
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
35.
When animators weren't sleeping, they were drinking.
Joseph Barbera
