Billy West Quotes

If someone gave me the chance to create something, I put myself into it. I just want to try to do something that will last forever and that won't leave people saying, 'Gee, it could have been better, it could've been this, it could've been that.'

You watch people and study them the way an alien would.

Everybody's got a bully pulpit now, and everybody's mad. I don't blame people for being angry and frustrated about everything. I'm old, but I'm not pulling my pants up to my tits. I take deep breaths of air when I enter a room and celebrate the fact that I'm alive.

I consider myself to be flawed, but I made it work. I'm not perfect. Anybody who thinks they are is whacked-out.

To me, it all comes down to things being character-driven. It's hard for me to look beyond that. CG and all this cool stuff - so be it. But to me, it pretty much begins and ends with character-driven plots rather than technologically-driven plots.

I've always said that you can't be the new Mel Blanc by doing Mel Blanc's voice.

Space Jam was weird because everybody has their own perception of what Bugs Bunny should sound like. Everybody. Somebody would just stick their head in the door and say, "He sounds too Jewish." Or, "He's too tough, he's off-putting. You gotta seduce kids, not scare them out the door."

Somebody's real voice is probably the hardest one that somebody could attempt. The characters are all, believe it or not, rooted in a reality of some sort. I've met and talked to people, and they're also fusions of showbiz periphery. But the best thing was, if you did your own voice and you were the star of the show - if it came to blows and they had you on the ropes and you had to leave, then they could just get someone to sound exactly like you.

But the throat just kind of falls into line once you realize in your head what it is. You got to remember the musicality of a character you're going to do.

You have to have some kind of power of observation, almost like a trained observer.

Robert Mitchum sounded different from John Wayne, and John Wayne sounded different from Clark Gable.

I had people that were coming on my own website and attacking me. You know, they were like Hillary Clinton supporters? It was very ugly.

As long as I can apply my craft, I'm happy.

Life is for the living. I was a little scared before surgery 'cause of the release you sign that says there's always a very small percent chance that you'll die during the operation.

It had more layers than an onion. These writers meant business. There was a level for everybody. Your major could be celestial mechanics, and there'd be celestial-mechanics jokes.

The only thing I have to say to people - try being the hero of your own world one day. Don't spend your life thinking about what somebody did or if they failed at this or if they did great at that or they got caught with a monkey, in a bathtub, having sex. You should at one point become the hero of your own world.

Well, I happen to have a love of vocal reproduction devices.

Somebody's real voice is probably the hardest one that somebody could attempt.

Robin Williams understands sonic performances. He understands what it's like to change your voice up.

It's very hard to take a character out of nothing, and put a hook on it, especially because it's only sonic. Futurama is a sonic world, and everyone's attention is focused on that sound and that little cartoon image. You can change it.

Even when I was coming through school I was a loner and I used to study music and listen to it and play it and play it, and I was in bands.

I don't get to watch Futurama, until it's on TV.

I'm not like a high intellectual.

I don't have that much of an ego where it's like "How dare you, you can't do something without me."

John Kricfalusi wanted me to quit the job when he got fired in 1992. But the problem there is that I wasn't his partner. I was a hired gun. And then people badmouth me for 10 years, like a rock in my shoe in that camp. It's a very small but active group of posters, as I've come to find out. But the thing is that I finally got to the point where, "Okay, I get you, I get it you don't like that I did what I did." But the thing was, the whole story was cockeyed. They said I put everybody out of work. No, I didn't. Everybody was going to be out of work if I didn't continue the Ren & Stimpy show.