116 Thought-Provoking Quotes By Hayao Miyazaki

"Problems begin the moment we're born. We're born with infinite possibilities, only to give up on one after another. To choose one thing means to give up another. That's inevitable. But what can you do? That's what it is to live."

"The greatness of a mind is determined by the depth of its suffering."

"Do everything by hand, even when using the computer."

"When I have the time, I like to go up to a cabin I have in the mountains. Sometimes friends will come by to visit me, but I also like to spend time alone. It reinvigorates me, hiking those mountain trails. After working on a film, it usually takes half a year for me to recover my mental and physical balance. I have to set aside time to recuperate. I guess when you add it all up, I’m not really working that many hours."

"Nobody has the right to sit in judgment and decide what’s good or bad for you."

"In the past, humans hesitated when they took lives, even non-human lives. But society had changed, and they no longer felt that way. As humans grew stronger, I think that we became quite arrogant, losing the sorrow of ‘we have no other choice.’ I think that in the essence of human civilization, we have the desire to become rich without limit, by taking the lives of other creatures"

"Producing an animation series merely to fill time slots in the broadcast schedule is like generating cultural pollution."

"When I start creating a villain, I start liking the villain and so the villain is not really evil."

"Plants exist in the weather and light rays that surround them – waving in the wind, shimmering in the sunlight. I am always puzzling over how to draw such things."

"We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation."

"We each need to find our own inspiration. Sometimes it is not easy."

"I create women characters by watching the female staff at my studio. Half the staff are women."

"Maybe that’s what these films are doing. They are my way of blessing the child."

"In my grandparents’ time, it was believed that spirits existed everywhere… in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything… I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything."

"Reality is for people that lack imagination."

"Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves."

"The love of weaponry is often a manifestation of infantile traits in an adult."

"I like the expression ‘lost possibilities.’ To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, and a life. To exist here, now, means to lose the possibility of being countless other potential selves. For example, I might have been the captain of a pirate ship, sailing with a lovely princess by my side. It means giving up this universe, giving up other potential selves. There are selves which are lost possibilities, and selves that could have been, and this is not limited just to us but to the people around us and even to Japan itself."

"Life is a winking light in the darkness."

"If you’re going to retire, retire early."