On Simpsons first-draft king John Swartzwelder, from John Orvted’s Unauthorized Oral History of the Simpsons:

We would have story meetings with him outside. And I remember distinctly one time being a young comedy writer, and Swartzwelder just happened to be sitting there, smoking a cigarette on the lawn. And I though, Man, I’m just gonna ask John Swartzwelder a random question and see what he says in return. And I said “John, what would you do if you had all the money that you could spend?” And without a moment’s hesitation he said “I would buy a battleship and the Empire State Building. With the Empire State Building, I would just let it run down and get decrepit. Because people would say, ‘You can’t do that! That’s the Empire State Building!’ I would say ‘No, I can! I own the Empire State Building!’ The battleship,” he said, “I just think it would change people’s conversations with me if they knew that I had a battleship.”

- Brent Forrester

“Also, the day of OJ’s Bronco chase, John didn’t show up for work. He told us that he had been walking around Encino with a baseball bat – looking for him.”

- Jennifer Crittenden