I think 'Family Guy' and 'American Dad' have definitely staked out their own style and territory, and now the accusations are coming that 'The Simpsons' is taking jokes from 'Family Guy.' And I can tell you, that ain't the case.

I had been drawing my weekly comic strip, 'Life in Hell,' for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was developing 'The Tracey Ullman Show' for the brand-new Fox network. He wanted me to come in and pitch an idea for doing little cartoons on that show.

Back in high school, I wrote a novel about a character named Bart Simpson. I thought it was a very unusual name for a kid at the time. I had this idea of an angry father yelling 'Bart,' and Bart sounds kind of like bark - like a barking dog.

My father was a really sharp cartoonist and filmmaker. He used to tape-record the family surreptitiously, either while we were driving around or at dinner, and in 1963 he and I made up a story about a brother and a sister, Lisa and Matt, having an adventure out in the woods with animals.

'The Simpsons' obviously is a huge success, and Fox has nothing to do with its success, with its creative success, and as a result they don't really like the show. They don't like 'The Simpsons' at Fox.

With 'Futurama,' I wanted to do unrequited love, and David Cohen agreed, and although our original plan was never to have Fry and Leela get together, we finally just said, 'You can only string the fans along so far.'

With 'Futurama,' I was just worried that somebody would beat us to it; it seemed so obvious that there should be an animated science fiction show set in the future. And one of the reasons why it's not, I learned, is that it's really, really difficult.

I loved literary science fiction. In fact, as a kid, when I was reading science fiction, I thought 'I can't wait for the future when the special effects are good' to represent what was in these books by Arthur C. Clarke, Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, Jack Vance.

'The Simpsons' was about children and married parents; 'Futurama' is about people in between; they're growing up and haven't settled down. Every other cartoon show seemed to be, you know, dumb dad, bratty kids.

The nice thing about 'Futurama' for me personally was that it was a way to honor some of the traditional ideas in literary science fiction, not so much movie or television science fiction - although we have that too, obviously. Our situation, a workplace comedy, led to all sorts of stuff.

'The Simpsons' basically - and 'Futurama' - are really smart shows. They're kind of disguised as these goofy animated sitcoms, but the references within the shows, if you're paying attention, are pretty smart and pretty sophisticated.

I know for a fact, obviously, because my kids grew up watching the show, that there are some things they are introduced to from 'The Simpsons', and then later in life they see the thing we're parodying. My kids had not seen 'Casablanca,' and we'd done parodies of 'Casablanca.'

We did 'The Simpsons Movie,' which took almost four years; it was the same people that do the TV show, and it just killed us. So that's why there hasn't been a second movie. But I imagine if the show ever does go off the air, they'll start doing movies.

I like all of the early relationship strips that were collected in 'Love Is Hell,' where I pretended to be an expert in relationships and did comics like 'The Nine Types of Boyfriends,' 'Sixteen Ways to End a Relationship,' 'Twenty-Four Things Not to Say in Bed,' and other arbitrarily numbered lists.

The conundrum that I face on a daily basis is that I have two sons who have grown up watching 'The Simpsons,' so they know exactly what buttons to push. They know how Bart irritates Homer, and they use these lines against me to tell me that I'm not funny anymore.

Charles Schultz is a really interesting case. He wrote that comic strip and drew it himself from beginning to end, and it's a work of genius. It's very simply drawn, but it has some really deep emotions that you don't expect in a silly-looking comic strip.

There's nothing better than a world where everybody's just trying to make each other laugh.

'Friends' was a magical thing, and no one's going to ever have anything like that again.

I'm very, very jealous of guys who just go and decide to party and then can work the next day.

I really lived life to its fullest and that got me in trouble from time to time.

When I die, I'd like 'Friends' to be listed behind 'helping people.'

Well, I was lucky enough to be involved in about 19 failures at an early age, so I'm realistic about the success I'm having and how quickly it can go away. What's important is to be smart about it.

I play a guy who is 40. And I am a very good actor, because I'm 41.

I'm making plans to go away for a month to focus on my sobriety and to continue my life in recovery. Please enjoy making fun of me on the world wide web.

I don't need to be reminded that I was on 'Friends.' I remember - some of it, anyway.

In television or a movie I bring my own ego and consequently can mess up. In the theatre I learnt very quickly to shut up and listen. Now I am able to get out of my own way.

I was like: I'm going to ask her [Julia Roberts] out but I'm going to be very nervous about it. Then she said yes, I got even more nervous.

If I hadn't had the experience of being famous, I would have searched for it my whole life. I would have just gone on and on trying to find it.

Chandler's the guy everybody thinks will do well with women, but he thinks too much and says the wrong thing.

I'm just glad that the whole John Wayne persona of a man is sort of old school now, because I'd never be able to do that. If that was the going rate today, I wouldn't be working.

I'd say that on 'Friends' my character was the guy bouncing around the room. I'm no longer that guy, necessarily, in my life. I used to be. But I'm not now.

When people try to take [smoking] away from me I say, 'hey, I stopped everything else.' But, I have to battle that one, too.

Ninety percent of video game AI really is pretty damn bad. I think that's actually why it's so much fun to shoot things. Because the AI is so bad and the characters are so annoying.

So I'm reading a book on my new iPad, but can't the iPad read it for me? Do I have to do everything?

It's not foreign for me to be talking about my problems in circles.

I'm a sensitive guy. If you are a woman and you're in any kind of emotional duress and you write a song about it, I'll buy you album.

I've been accused of not really paying attention to a sentence unless my name comes up in it twice.

I don't have a very 'masculine' taste in music. I get a lot of heat from my friends about that.

I've just found out there are pages on the internet dedicated to whether I'm gay or not.

I'm glad that life isn't like a Christmas song, because if my friends and I were building a snowman and it suddenly came alive when we put a hat on it, I'd probably freak and stab it to death with an icicle.

I have a dark side; it's been pretty well documented. It wouldn't be bad to show that in some light in my work...It's something I no longer fear doing and am actually excited about doing.

If there's a silence in a room I'll try to fill it as soon as humanly possible.

I gravitate towards sort of broken characters who try to be better people.

I learned to fall down early in life - I was, like, six - because I realized it was a way to make girls laugh.

In a perfect world, my tennis game gets better. I have kids and a beautiful wife and live on some hill somewhere that's not in Los Angeles. And the script that Tom Hanks just barely turned down gets in my hands.

I've been accused of not really paying attention to a sentence unless my name comes up in it twice.

When I die, I'd like' Friends' to be listed behind 'helping people.'

I don't have a very 'masculine' taste in music. I get a lot of heat from my friends about that.

I'm very similar to Chandler in many ways, although Chandler is funnier than me, and Chandler absolutely hates his job whereas I absolutely love my job.

I became a big Kings fan, and then later on my hometown of Ottawa got a team, so then I was very, very torn. I just love both of those teams very much.