Stephen Hillenburg

Actor

1961-08-21

Quotes by Stephen Hillenburg

• SpongeBob represents idiocy. He is dumb. Patrick is dumb. Mr. Krabs is greedy. Squidward is a snob and vain.

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• The main thing about SpongeBob is that he celebrates innocence. His outlook on life is very optimistic and earnest, and I think kids relate to that. He has a creative spark in the same way children are very creative from an open and naive perspective.

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• I wanted to do a show about a character that was an innocent, and so I focused on a sea sponge because it's a funny animal, a strange one.

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• You have to imagine you write a show about a sponge and you think that maybe a few people will think it is funny, some college students, but it takes off. It is truly shocking - to the point where it is bizarre.

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• 'The Simpsons' is a tough act to follow, so I thought it was best not to do what they do.

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• I was just looking at a packet that had SpongeBob thong underwear, so it goes farther than I would imagine.

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• I knew I wanted to create a character who was nerdy and kind of square, so when I drew a square sponge, everything came together. And originally his name was SpongeBoy, but there we couldn't use that for trademark reasons.

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• I see SpongeBob on ice-cream trucks a lot, and I've got bootleg SpongeBob merchandise from Mexico.

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• I wanted to create a small town underwater where the characters were more like us than like fish. They have fire. They take walks. They drive. They have pets and holidays.

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• On TV, it is more efficient to use voice-over people because it is really hard to get celebrity voices to recur in a series.

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• I think it's amusing to watch a naive, well-meaning character kind of undo more cynical characters - kind of like watching Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin.

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• SpongeBob is a complete innocent - not an idiot. SpongeBob never fully realizes how stupid Patrick is. They're whipping themselves up into situations - that's always where the humor comes from.

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