Montgomery Burns: “I would give everything I have to have a little more”

Montgomery Burns has been past retirement age for decades. But he is still active, as much as his delicate iron health allows him, and he goes daily, from his Springfield mansion, to his immense office in the nuclear power plant, from whose desk he watches, thanks to the television monitors, all the dependencies of the facilities

Q Who is that employee eating donuts on the control panel of the plant?

RY what the hell do I know. Smithers is the one who carries out the names in the company. Have you no intention of asking me anything more interesting?

Q Does nuclear power really make that much money?

R I could give more, but I’m not complaining. The latest agreement with North Korea has allowed me to double my modest wealth. God bless Kim Jong IL.

Q And you’re not worried about contamination?

A What pollution? As you will have observed, our plant does not emit CO2. Those fumes are annoying.

Q But the fish in the Springfield river have three eyes!

A. Excellent. They are a living example of the evolution of species.

Q Doesn’t that indicate that the control panel has security flaws?

A. Not at all. In the last forty years only Waylon Smithers has suffered an accident and such a thing has never happened again.

Q Wasn’t the facility almost blown up?

A. Almost. That’s the key word. The butt of one of the employees prevented it.

Q Mr. Burns, you are accused of unlimited ambition, is it true that you think family is an impediment to business?

R Family, religion and friendship. If the opportunity presents itself, don’t get caught on the way to the maternity hospital or kneeling in a church. That is my advice.

Q And doesn’t it seem sick to you to live so attached to your fortune?

A. I don’t. God knows he would give everything I have to have a little more.

Q Do you plan to go into other businesses?

A I am always thinking of new activities. And in my hobbies, it comes to be the same. But often I run into some stupid laws that prevent me.

Q Why do you live in Springfield? Wouldn’t you like to live in a big city where a billionaire like you could go unnoticed?

R Smithers has ever suggested that I move to San Francisco, but I tell him he’s crazy. Here he knows me all over the world. What would I do in New York or San Francisco?

The pleasure of having money consist in instilling fear in your peers. I have not become rich so that they smile at me on the street.