Caroll Spinney Quotes

#1. I was suffering a divorce, and I was very unhappy because my children were very young. It hit me when a woman, a fan, was chatting with me. She was pleased to meet Big Bird because her children liked him and liked the show, but she didn't know that my face was streamed with tears.

Caroll Spinney

#2. Jim [Henson] had written letters to his five children to be opened only after his death. Brian read from his. Jim wrote, 'Be good to each other. Love and forgive everybody.' I remembered Jim telling me that he never wasted energy on hating anybody; he had too much thinking to do.

Caroll Spinney

#3. When I was eight, I bought my first puppet. It was a monkey, and I paid five cents for it. I collected some scrap wood and built myself a puppet theatre. I made 32 cents with my first show, which I thought was pretty good, and that's when I knew I would be a puppeteer when I grew up.

Caroll Spinney

#4. Big Bird is based on what I learned as a child.

Caroll Spinney

#5. The other puppeteers are really good, often when they are singing together, they go left, right, left ... But if they are all moving to the left, I'm moving to the right. Big Bird and Oscar, that's okay, because they are individuals anyway.

Caroll Spinney

#6. I've learned to say, 'I'm a friend of Big Bird. He even taught me how to sound like him.'

Caroll Spinney

#7. You can exaggerate with puppets. You're not trying to look like real people. The way the Muppets are designed is really appealing. Puppets are best if they're exaggerated creatures.

Caroll Spinney

#8. I have a strong memory of my early childhood. I can remember life before I was two. I remember being toilet-trained like it was last week - and it wasn't last week.

Caroll Spinney

#9. Most people don't hold a job for 45 years. They pass on or want to retire. I don't want to retire. My real goal is to do 50 years on 'Sesame Street,' and I only got 4-and-a-half years to go.

Caroll Spinney

#10. I've played Big Bird for over half my life, and now I'm in my 80s. It does feel older than 79. Someone said it's just a number, and I said, 'No, I genuinely feel older.'

Caroll Spinney

#11. I was called such names as a kid. Being the smallest boy in the class with a name like Caroll. I remember going home and saying to my mom, 'What were you thinking?'

Caroll Spinney

#12. I see no reason to quit. I can't imagine walking away from being Big Bird. I mean, that's an awfully good job that there's not too many of them. So I just want to keep doing it till I can't do it anymore.

Caroll Spinney

#13. Big Bird went through his very human kind of struggles as a child. No other children's character has been that complete and detailed.

Caroll Spinney

#14. I think there's an awful lot of me in Big Bird, but Oscar is pretty much - I think I know how he thinks because he thinks exactly the opposite of what I think is a good way to be.

Caroll Spinney

#15. I found out animation is incredibly boring. You draw and draw and draw, and it's only a few seconds done in a week.

Caroll Spinney

#16. I know I don't own Big Bird, but I own his soul, I feel.

Caroll Spinney