116 Thought-Provoking Quotes By Hayao Miyazaki

"Since I am a person who starts work without clear knowledge of a storyline, every single scene is a pivotal scene."

"I wish I was better at art. I love some of the great artists of the 19th century and, compared to them, I just feel I lack this technique that they had. They have so much skill."

"I think 2-D animation disappeared from Disney because they made so many uninteresting films. They became very conservative in the way they created them. It’s too bad. I thought 2-D and 3-D could coexist happily."

"I’m actually not that worried. I wouldn’t give up on it completely. Once in a while, there are strange, rich people who like to invest in odd things. You’re going to have people in the corners of garages making cartoons to please themselves. And I’m more interested in those people than I am in big business."

"In our work, the question is, how much you absorb from others. So for me, creativity is really like a relay race. As children, we are handed a baton. Rather than passing it onto the next generation as is first, we need to digest it and make it our own."

"The single difference between films for children and films for adults is that in films for children, there is always the option to start again, to create a new beginning. In films for adults, there are no ways to change things. What happened, happened."

"There’s an old saying, ‘Look not into the heart of the Ohmu.’ They say if you do, you’ll never come back."

"You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two."

"I try to dig deep into the well of my subconscious. At a certain moment in that process, the lid is opened and very different ideas and visions are liberated. With those, I can start making a film. But maybe it's better that you don't open that lid completely, because if you release your subconscious it becomes really hard to live a social or family life."

"Logic is using the front part of the brain, that’s all. But you can’t make a film with logic. Or if you look at it differently, everybody can make a film with logic. But my way is to not use logic."

"I don’t like games. You’re robbing the precious time of children to be children. They need to be in touch with the real world more."

"I never read reviews. I’m not interested. But I value a lot the reactions of the spectators."

"I don’t have the story finished and ready when we start work on a film. I usually don’t have the time. So the story develops when I start drawing storyboards. The production starts very soon thereafter, while the storyboards are still developing. We never know where the story will go but we just keeping working on the film as it develops. It’s a dangerous way to make an animation film and I would like it to be different, but unfortunately, that’s the way I work and everyone else is kind of forced to subject themselves to it."

"Whoever falls, hatred will breed hatred."

"We live in an age when it is cheaper to buy the rights to movies than to make them."

"The villains are all parts of me. For years I’ve been wondering what it would be like if all those negative elements were forced onto the main character’s side. I can understand a character with that kind of anger."

"Cut off a wolf’s head and it still has the power to bite."

"Airplanes are the most beautiful when they are in the air."

"Its not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances. I want my young friends to live like that, and I think they, too, have such a wish."

"Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do."