116 Thought-Provoking Quotes By Hayao Miyazaki

"I’d like to see Manhattan underwater. I’d like to see when the human population plummets and there are no more high rises, because nobody’s buying them. I’m excited about that. Money and desire – all that is going to collapse, and wild green grasses are going to take over."

"Chihiro, huh? Her real name’s Chihiro? Can’t beat the power of love."

"When you watch the subtitled version you are probably missing just as many things. There is a layer and a nuance you’re not going to get. Film crosses so many borders these days. Of course it is going to be distorted."

"At the time, sword and sorcery stories were quite popular. There were female warriors waving swords around as well, but the genre is populated entirely with people who have absolutely no responsibility to anyone, so I knew my story would have to be completely different from any of these."

"Those are shrines. Some people believe spirits live in them."

"I can’t stand modern movies. The images are too weird and eccentric for me."

"The characters are born from repetition, from repeatedly thinking about them. I have their outline in my head. I become the character and as the character, I visit the locations of the story many, many times. Only after that I start drawing the character, but again I do it many, many times, over and over. And I only finish just before the deadline."

"If someone were to ask me what the most important thing is when creating a new animated work, my answer would be that you first have to know what you want to say with it. In other words, you have to have a theme. Surprisingly, perhaps, people sometimes overlook this basic fact of filmmaking and overemphasize technique instead. There are innumerable examples of people making films with a very high level of technique, but only a very fuzzy idea of what they really want to say. And after watching their films, viewers are usually completely befuddled. Yet when people who know what they want to say make films with a low level of technique, we still greatly appreciate the films because there is really something to them."

"You always have to appeal to your audience. You always have to consider how well your project will do in terms of admissions. I abandoned many stories because of that. But I don’t get too down about it. It’s something I accepted from the time I decided to work in films."

"When a man is shooting a handgun, it’s just like he is shooting because that’s his job, and he has no other choice. It’s no good. When a girl is shooting a handgun, it’s really something."

"I think we should stop using nuclear power plants because it’s an old system that we can’t control."

"I like underwater life."

"Currently computer graphics are used a great deal, but it can be excessive."

"Maybe there was a time when you could make films that mattered, but now?"

"I make films as a business, not as a cultural endeavor."

"Rather than making that a good project, I like to make the kinds of films that children can understand in five minutes what the film is about."