Seth MacFarlane quotes:

Denzel Washington has a great sense of humor. He did all those 'Nutty Professor' movies.

I love the English. My God, they brought us 'Benny Hill,' 'Monty Python,' 'The Office,' Neville Chamberlain.

I was a huge 'Star Trek' fan. I loved the 'Twilight Zone' growing up. In the future, I hope to create some thoughtful, sci-fi drama.

I always thought it would be funny to have the Parents Television Council write an episode of 'Family Guy' and give them full creative control. Then see how good the episode is. That's something we've actually discussed in the writers' room. We haven't proposed it yet, but if somebody from the PTC reads this, it might be worth discussing.

I do not believe in God. I'm an atheist. I consider myself a critical thinker, and it fascinates me that in the 21st century most people still believe in, as George Carlin puts it, 'the invisible man living in the sky'

At one point, I was hell-bent on being a Disney animator, and sort of got over that in college and wanted to do my own stuff. You know, towards the end of college I had actually planned to go to the Boston Conservatory of Music for musical theater.

Evolution doesn't care whether you believe in it or not, no more than gravity does. I want to rekindle excitement over what we've achieved as a species with the space program. We can't afford to regress back to the days of superstition.

Every year, the Friday before the new Saturday-morning shows would premiere, the networks would do this big preview special, and I was always glued to the TV. As horrible as they were, they were entertaining at the time. There was a lot of showmanship from the networks based around the new lineup.

I have a car that I like - an Aston Martin - for Sunday drives in the country.

The Simpsons are ugly-looking, and they should be. That's what works. That's one of the things that's funny.

American Dad' is, by its nature, much more political.

The Brady Bunch' asks nothing of you as a viewer. Sometimes is just what the doctor ordered.

I'm big on the importance of science, particularly right now at this point in time when there's sort of a systematic rejection of science by a lot of people in America.

When you are in a room and your job is to write jokes 10 hours a day, your mind starts going to strange places.

The quest for Tommy Lee Jones' laugh begins now.

When astrology was conceived, all of the celestial bodies were in different places. So if you're a Sagittarius now, I guess you would have been a Capricorn 2,000 years ago.

Some of those more out-there jokes were written in the wee hours of the morning. Somehow, they remained funny the next day.

I wrote on a show called Johnny Bravo when I was at Hanna-Barbera.

I think at times I read too much of my own press. I wish I was better at taking in how great my life is, but that's surprisingly elusive. I tend to be very hard on myself and insecure about failing no matter what happens.

The worst thing to happen at the Oscars would be if nothing happened. You want something unscripted, something to riff on, something kinda out there.

What makes me happy is just keeping my brain challenged and stimulated and on its toes.

There are people on staff who have made that point, that the upside to a second Bush term is that it makes 'American Dad' work better. To me, the price is too high. I would gladly give up the comedy to have a President Kerry. But you work with what you have.

There have to be people who are vocal about the advancement of knowledge over faith.

The good thing about Broadway is that you don't have to worry about an airdate. It gets done when it gets done.

Everybody in my family had a real sick, twisted sense of humor. Most of the jokes we make in our house, we would just never even dream of making anywhere else. Just sick, horrible stuff. That wasn't anything new to college.

There are times when I'm under the weather and the corporate machine tries to put me in the recording booth anyway. It's always up to me to say, 'Guys, listen to me, listen to what I sound like. I'm not myself.'

You would not want me on your football team.

The trend today is vampires, zombies, angels, all the stuff that puts me right to sleep. It's too bad because it's so much less interesting than the diversity of stories you can tell with science.

I'm not a fatalist. I'm not a religious person. I'm sure there are close calls that we're not even aware of hundreds of times a year. You cross the street, and if you'd crossed the street two minutes later, you'd have been hit by a car, but you'd never know it. I'm sure that kind of stuff happens all the time.

Believe it or not, I have about the same success rate as anyone else. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss.

I hate people who say 'Just to play devil's advocate.'

The way Disney characters move, they're very kind of slow and fluid and flowing; one pose kind of eases into the next. If you look at a show like 'The Simpsons' and subsequently a show like 'Family Guy' - the characters will jerk from pose to pose a lot, a bit more snappy. Which sort of goes along with the writing tone of the show.

We never really tried to shock for shock's sake on 'Family Guy'. If something was horribly offensive and shocking, we would put it in if it was also hysterically funny.

Family Guy' has this weird thing of attracting people. People either hate it or can't get enough of it. There's really no one in between.

When 'Family Guy' started, we wanted to make it more like a sitcom. And there was very little music.

[With R-rated movie] you're not dealing with the restrictions imposed by the FCC. They're self-imposed. In a way, that does make it harder. You actually have to think about it, as opposed to just taking for granted that you're not going to be able to do this.

The success of The Simpsons really opened doors. It showed that if you were working in animation you didn't necessarily have to be working in kids' television.

Sarah Palin is very pro-life of course, unless the life is that of an Iraqi civilian or a wolf running frantically from a roaring helicopter while being strafed with ribbons of automatic weapons fire.

I'm from Connecticut, and we don't have any dialects. Well, I don't think we have any dialects, and yeah, it's very complex. That Rhode Island/Massachusetts New England region is arguably the hardest dialect to nail.

The success of 'The Simpsons' really opened doors. It showed that if you were working in animation you didn't necessarily have to be working in kids' television.

I'll tell you what I think is not okay. Have you ever seen that show on MSNBC, 'Lockup?' It's a reality show that takes place inside a prison. Do the prisoners have to sign release forms? Or do they have to be on it whether they like it or not?

I was about two years old when I first started drawing recognizable characters.

The average person has eight different jobs over the course of their lifetime. You get a little antsy doing the same thing.

'Family Guy' has this weird thing of attracting people. People either hate it or can't get enough of it. There's really no one in between.

If something is shocking without being funny it's hard to justify.

Obviously I'm a big fan of 'South Park', but it gets tiring at times when there's so much of it.

I spent my entire childhood in the same town, in Kent. I went to grade school there. There was a boarding school that my mother taught at, called - appropriately enough - Kent School, that I went to. Yeah, pretty much my entire childhood was spent in that town.

'The Brady Bunch' asks nothing of you as a viewer. Sometimes is just what the doctor ordered.

The resistance to science is idiotic.

I'm wide open to getting married, but actors are not easy people to date. You end up sharing that person with this other mistress that is their career. I very much like the traditional courtship method of making a date. That's what they do in normal places, but Hollywood's not normal.

If a song is funny and absurd, and it sounds great, it's just going to be that much funnier. And there's no better example of that than 'Monty Python.'

Fox is notorious for having a very thick skin about taking shots at themselves.

I still do a lot of drawing on a daily basis.

People do that on Facebook and it's the dumbest thing in the world. I don't care what your dinner looks like. Stop cluttering up the Internet with pictures of your dinner.

Science has become politicized, and that's an embarrassment.

I cannot tell good art from bad art. I have no eye for it.

I'm one of the few people in Hollywood who actually had a good childhood.

I can't believe I am hosting the Oscars. It's an honor everyone else said no.

Adults acting like children and children acting like adults is generally a pretty reliable comic device.

'American Dad' is, by its nature, much more political.

Character I want to be: "Blunt Talk's".

Chris Elliott could read the phonebook and he's funny.

Even if you know a character really well, there's no formula for what jokes will work and what won't.

Every woman's innate ability to let anything go.

From a writing standpoint, maybe television is a little more satisfying because it's not all hinging on one thing. You can experiment, week to week, and you can be a little narrower in your scope one week, and then be a little broader the next week. But with film, everything can look the way you want it to look. You can really sculpt the final product. So from a directorial standpoint, film is more satisfying. But, they're both forms of media that I'd like to keep involvement in.

I did a lot of theater when I was in high school and college. I also did stand-up in college, so it was always part of what I did.

I distrust all television doctors.

I don't gravitate toward any particular genre. I like to do things that interest me, regardless of genre. I've had a blast doing Cosmos, and I'm said that it's coming to an end. I would like to do something else like that.

I don't smoke much pot anymore.

I had - I was pretty hell bent on getting into the cartoon business specifically as an artist from the get-go.

I tend to lean more towards the Westerns of the 40s and 50s as opposed to the 60s and 70s. They get a little too drab for me when you get into the Spaghetti Western era. I love the John Ford movies. I love the music. I love the scope.

I was a big Fred Flintstone fan.

If I were to do a musical, I think I would rather make a film musical.

If something sticks around long enough that it makes it to seasonal D.V.D. release, I'll watch it. That's how I watched 'The Sopranos'.

I'm the guy in the crowd making fun of the hero's shirt.

Most of the outrage comes from not the public, but from the media, the press and writers.

My dad always played Anne Murray in the car on the way to the dump when I was a kid.

Nobody sets out to offend or shock for the sake of shocking. You set out to get laughs.

religion notoriously claims that they invented morality, they didn't. Morality exists in animals, ya know.

The only problem is time.

The only reason we die, is because we accept death as an inevitability.

The problem with the cable networks is the lack of money, not from personal income but as far as show budget.

The relationship between Aquaman and Aqualad should be investigated.

The two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a big fat white guy who is threatened by change.

There are things about the single lifestyle that are very appealing.

There were two things that became apparent, pretty quickly into the process. One was that the muscles didn't take as much reconditioning as I thought they would. It was more like voice acting than I thought it would be. You're using your whole body and there are things that are different, but when you are doing a character, even in the booth, nobody is watching but my face will do different things when I do different characters.

Whoever invented spray cheese had to have been a Harvard guy.

With any half-hour comedy, it kind of takes on its own life and finds itself.

You break the story first, and then you go into the specifics.

You gotta keep the funny intact.