“I have always been more interested in creating a character that contains something crippled. I think nearly all of us have some kind of defect.”

The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Luck is believing you’re lucky.

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

There is only one true aristocracy . . . and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!

Something in me will save me from utter ruin no matter what comes.

I don’t believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.

I can’t expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself.

There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people. Some are a little better or a little worse, but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice.

Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.

Physical beauty is passing – a transitory possession – but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart – I have all these things – aren’t taken away but grow! Increase with the years!

Guessing isn’t knowing.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it… Success is shy – it won’t come out while you’re watching.

Nobody sees anybody truly, but all through the flaws of their own ego.

There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be.

Oh you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you

My dad never really wrote what he thought. None of his inner rage and darkness and problems, which we all have, made it on to the page. For him, writing was a process of making everything appear funny.

I have a self-defense mind. I’ve had it all my life.

There is a man sleeping in the grass. And over him is gathering the greatest storm of all his days.

Eventually the banking systems of all advanced economies reach magnitudes of 500 percent,

Have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complains.

We really are living in the era that all this sci-fi literature and cinema was centered around.

How much research I have to do depends on the nature of the story. For fantasy, none at all.

And all these people really wanted to reinvigorate the animated musical, so they came to Howard Ashman and me. That was my entry into Disney.