“We make films that we ourselves would want to see and then hope that other people would want to see it. If you try to analyze audiences or think there’s some sophisticated recipe for success, then I think you are doomed. You’re making it too complicated.”

Animation is about creating the illusion of life. And you can’t create it if you don’t have one.

If there are similarities, it’s simply because the same thoughts that occurred to other people also occurred to me. I’d be astonished if anyone could come up with any truly original powers that were at all interesting any more.

I’ve seen Steelheart bleed

I had about the biggest, longest wish list anyone could have, and 99 percent of what I wanted to get on the screen we got on the screen within our schedule and within our budget and within our resources.

Look, it’s a mainstream animated movie, and how often are those considered thought provoking? It’s meant to be a great time at the theater, but it’s also designed to work on more than one level

If you look at a lot of animated movies, they don’t pay attention to how things move through space.

To make something really great and different and interesting means taking risks and following these ideas in your head.

When you assemble animation teams the way you do a live-action film, you’re often struggling a bit to get a cohesive team together, so if you have a team that works well together, you’re hoping for another film so that you can refine the team.

Trying to take money out of politics is like trying to take jumping out of basketball.

I’m not trying to keep anybody happy.

I think it gets uncomfortable when you try to act like you didn’t just tell a joke that bombed.

I think controversy has this allusion of being controversial but it’s totally not, which is why I’m trying to get away from it because it’s just easy and automatic.

In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little bit beyond my reach and I’m trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.

My favourite genre lies inside myself, and as I follow my favourite stories, characters and images, it sums up to a certain genre.

People in the rich countries who have done very well, who are at the top of the income pyramid, try to steamroll over the opposition of the middle without changing anything in social programs, or any redistribution. And they take their votes for a given.

When I started, the scripts weren’t as good, and you’d have to have a huge burst of energy to go, “Sheesh, how am I going to? This stuff’s no good.”