Top 100 Hayao Miyazaki Quotes
#1. To have a film where there's an evil figure and a good person fights against the evil figure and everything becomes a happy ending, that's one way to make a film. But then that means you have to draw, as an animator, the evil figure. And it's not very pleasant to draw evil figures
Hayao Miyazaki
#2. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It's produced by humans who can't stand looking at other humans. And that's why the industry is full of otaku!
Hayao Miyazaki
#3. Whenever someone creates something with all of their heart, then that creation is given a soul.
Hayao Miyazaki
#4. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good.
Hayao Miyazaki
#5. We get strength and encouragement from watching children.
Hayao Miyazaki
#6. Yet, even amidst the hatred and carnage, life is still worth living. It is possible for wonderful encounters and beautiful things to exist.
Hayao Miyazaki
#7. I can't do a film after having debated it. I am unable to do a film while discussing it with my team. I issue directives. I do not achieve it otherwise.
Hayao Miyazaki
#8. No matter how many WEAPONS you have, no matter how great your TECHNOLOGY might be, the world cannot live without LOVE.
Hayao Miyazaki
#9. People who design machines and airplanes {or buildings}, no matter how much they believe that what they do is good, the winds of time eventually turn them into tools of industrial civilization. They're cursed dreams. Animation, too. Beautiful yet cursed dreams.
Hayao Miyazaki
#10. The greatness of a mind is determined by the depth of its suffering.
Hayao Miyazaki
#11. In order to grow your audience, you must betray their expectations.
Hayao Miyazaki
#12. Watching John Lasseter's films, I think I can understand better than anyone that what he's doing, is going straight ahead with his vision and working really hard to get that vision into film form. And I feel that my understanding this of him is my friendship towards him.
Hayao Miyazaki
#13. Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions.
Hayao Miyazaki
#14. Currently computer graphics are used a great deal, but it can be excessive.
Hayao Miyazaki
#15. Prizes do not mean anything to me. I think it is more important to make a child aware of the existence of a weird creature like a water spider that breathes through its backside.
Hayao Miyazaki
#16. The principle I adhere to when directing, is that I make good use of everything my staff creates. Even if they make foregrounds that don't quite fit with my backgrounds, I never waste it and try to find the best use for it.
Hayao Miyazaki
#17. Chihiro, huh? Her real name's Chihiro? Can't beat the power of love.
Hayao Miyazaki
#18. I do believe in the power of story. I believe that stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, that they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners.
Hayao Miyazaki
#21. Is someone different at age 18 or 60? I believe one stays the same.
Hayao Miyazaki
#22. Nobody has the right to sit in judgment and decide what's good or bad for you.
Hayao Miyazaki
#23. Since I am a person who starts work without clear knowledge of a storyline, every single scene is a pivotal scene.
Hayao Miyazaki
#24. We each need to find our own inspiration. Sometimes it is not easy.
Hayao Miyazaki
#25. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#26. Airplanes are the most beautiful when they are in the air.
Hayao Miyazaki
#27. I am an animator. I feel like I'm the manager of a animation cinema factory. I am not an executive. I'm rather like a foreman, like the boss of a team of craftsmen. That is the spirit of how I work.
Hayao Miyazaki
#28. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#29. Many of my movies have strong female leads- brave, self-sufficient girls that don't think twice about fighting for what they believe with all their heart. They'll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.
Hayao Miyazaki
#30. My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.
Hayao Miyazaki
#31. In this world of ours, the sparrow must live like a hawk if he is to fly at all.
Hayao Miyazaki
#33. The creation of a single world comes from a huge number of fragments and chaos.
Hayao Miyazaki
#34. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#35. Maybe that's what these films are doing. They are my way of blessing the child
Hayao Miyazaki
#36. I never read reviews. I'm not interested. But I value a lot the reactions of the spectators.
Hayao Miyazaki
#37. But remember this, Japanese boy ... airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.
Hayao Miyazaki
#38. I managed to work for more than 50 years with just paper, pencils and film. My son's generation and the one coming up after can't work with just paper and pencils any more. I managed to avoid using a computer. I don't even have a cellphone. I feel lucky I managed to live like that.
Hayao Miyazaki
#39. We are not trying to solve the world's problems ... However, even in the midst of hatred and killing, there are things worth living for. A wonderful encounter, or a thing of beauty can still exist.
Hayao Miyazaki
#40. The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless.
Hayao Miyazaki
#41. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#42. I think it's really good for a family or children to have a dog, cat, bird or whatever to grow up with.
Hayao Miyazaki
#44. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#46. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#47. I'm not going to make movies that tell children, "You should despair and run away".
Hayao Miyazaki
#48. These days, there are angry ghosts all around us, dead from wars, sickness, starvation--and nobody cares. So you say you're under a curse? Well, so what? So's the whole damned world.
Hayao Miyazaki
#49. Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves.
Hayao Miyazaki
#51. Always believe in yourself. Do this and no matter where you are, you will have nothing to fear.
Hayao Miyazaki
#52. Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over.
Hayao Miyazaki
#53. There are so many ships in the animation sea that are computer driven, that I think we can have at least one that's just a log raft that we can row by hand.
Hayao Miyazaki
#54. Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do.
Hayao Miyazaki
#55. I can't stand modern movies. The images are too weird and eccentric for me.
Hayao Miyazaki
#57. I would like to make a film to tell children "it's good to be alive".
Hayao Miyazaki
#58. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#59. The winds of time eventually turn them into the tools of industrial civillisation. It's never unscathed.
Hayao Miyazaki
#60. What you mean by 'peace' is nothing more than the endless repetition of human folly.
Hayao Miyazaki
#61. I wanted to convey the message to children that this life is worth living,
Hayao Miyazaki
#62. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#63. I think Tokyo is going to sink under water soon. All those stupid high-rise buildings will sink and maybe all the traffic will be gone. And everything will be peaceful and quiet.
Hayao Miyazaki
#64. Sometimes I test myself saying, 'If I get a death sentence if I don't make this movie, would I still make this movie?'
Hayao Miyazaki
#65. Cut off a wolf's head and it still has the power to bite.
Hayao Miyazaki
#66. I think we should stop using nuclear power plants because it's an old system that we can't control.
Hayao Miyazaki
#67. We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation.
Hayao Miyazaki
#68. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#69. It would be wonderful if I could see the end of civilization during my lifetime.
Hayao Miyazaki
#70. Children understand intuitively that the world they have been born into is not a blessed world.
Hayao Miyazaki
#71. When I start creating a villain, I start liking the villain and so the villain is not really evil.
Hayao Miyazaki
#72. You may not like what's happening, but just accept it, and let's try to live together. Even if you feel angry, let's be patient and endure, let's try to live together. I've realized that this is the only way forward.
Hayao Miyazaki
#73. Do everything by hand, even when using the computer.
Hayao Miyazaki
#74. I make films as a business, not as a cultural endeavor.
Hayao Miyazaki
#75. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#76. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#77. I find it pointless sitting in my house not working, though I like to go on extended vacations from time to time.
Hayao Miyazaki
#78. First don't panic, second don't panic and third DID I MENTCHIN NOT TO PANIC?!
Hayao Miyazaki
#79. The love of weaponry is often a manifestation of infantile traits in an adult.
Hayao Miyazaki
#80. Producing an animation series merely to fill time slots in the broadcast schedule is like generating cultural pollution.
Hayao Miyazaki
#81. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#85. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#87. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#88. Jiji: [after hearing that Kiki plans on leaving town for her witch training] I'm going to put my paws together and pray that you're not serious!
Hayao Miyazaki
#89. I believe that fantasy in the meaning of imagination is very important. We shouldn't stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind, and of the imagination.
Hayao Miyazaki
#90. We live in an age when it is cheaper to buy the rights to movies than to make them.
Hayao Miyazaki
#91. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#92. Once you have met someone, you never really forget them.
Hayao Miyazaki
#93. It seems like everything that we see perceived in the brain before we actually use our own eyes, that everything we see is coming through computers or machines and then is being input in our brain cells. So that really worries me.
Hayao Miyazaki
#94. Virtual reality is a denial of reality. We need to be open to the powers of imagination, which brings something useful to reality. Virtual reality can imprison people.
Hayao Miyazaki
#95. 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.
Hayao Miyazaki
#96. I myself become terrified of death when I am in a negative state of mind. But the thought of death ceases to bother me once I become productive.
Hayao Miyazaki
#98. Our lives are like the wind ... or like sounds.
We come into being, resonate with each other ...
Then fade away
Hayao Miyazaki
#100. I create women characters by watching the female staff at my studio. Half the staff are women.
Hayao Miyazaki
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
