Inside me there's a thin person struggling to get out, but I can usually sedate him with four or five cupcakes.

Bob Thaves (1924–2006) was an American cartoonist best known for his long-running syndicated strip “Frank & Ernest.” The line is widely circulated as a Thaves quip and is typically attributed to his cartoon work rather than to a speech or essay. It reflects the late-20th-century American boom in diet culture and self-deprecating humor about weight and overeating—common themes in newspaper comics aimed at broad audiences. Thaves often used one-liners that hinge on a quick reversal: an earnest aspiration (being “thin”) undercut by a comic confession of indulgence.

The joke personifies the speaker’s “thin” ideal self as a captive figure trying to escape, while the speaker’s appetites act like a tranquilizer. The humor comes from treating cupcakes as a sedative—an absurdly medical metaphor for emotional eating and self-sabotage. Beneath the punchline is a familiar tension between aspiration and habit: the desire for self-control versus the immediate comfort of food. The line also satirizes the way people talk about dieting in moral or heroic terms, suggesting that the “battle” is often lost not to grand temptations but to small, sweet, everyday indulgences.

“Inside every fat person there’s a thin person struggling to get out.” (often circulated without attribution; Thaves’s version adds the cupcake punchline)
“Inside me there’s a thin person struggling to get out, but I can usually sedate her with four or five cupcakes.”
“Inside me there’s a thin person struggling to get out, but I can usually sedate him with a large pizza.”