Harryhausen's Quotes

#1. Watching Ray Harryhausen's films growing up was a pure joy. He brought legends to life and he became a legend himself. And I am sure that future generations of animators will continue to look to him for inspiration.

Joe Letteri

#2. As a kid, I sat transfixed watching Ray Harryhausen's '7th Voyage of Sinbad.'

Raymond E. Feist

#3. Ray Harryhausen's 'Sinbad' picture was the first film I remember seeing. I was two years old when it came out, and it changed my life forever. I had nightmares about dragons and stuff for years - and loved it!

Warren Spector

#4. I always considered Ray Harryhausen's work so fine that it was way out of my league: in terms of realism and naturalism, in terms of animal movement.

Nick Park

#5. I think of Ray Harryhausen's work - I knew his name before I knew any actor or director's names. His films had an impact on me very early on, probably even more than Disney. I think that's what made me interested in animation: His work.

Tim Burton

#6. I had to learn to do everything because I couldn't find another kindred soul. Now you see eighty people listed doing the same things I was doing by myself.

Ray Harryhausen

#7. Animation requires a great deal of concentration, and I preferred to work alone because then I'm not deterred by somebody asking me if I want coffee, or the phone ringing or something.

Ray Harryhausen

#8. I prefer to work alone and do everything alone, even today.

Ray Harryhausen

#9. So our films had a lot more to them than entertainment value, and I'm glad that a lot of people recognize that now. People realize now the value of them as educational.

Ray Harryhausen

#10. We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye.

Sherman Alexie

#11. I used to send away for eight-minute Super 8 movies of various Ray Harryhausen scenes advertised on the back of 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' magazine.

Peter Jackson

#12. You could believe that Sinbad could fight a skeleton because that's from a period in the past, a magical period. But if you had James Bond fighting a skeleton, it'd be almost comical.

Ray Harryhausen

#13. Many times I felt like I'd do better than what the director did, but some of them got a little discouraged because they didn't have full charge of making the film, and sometimes there'd be battles of egos.

Ray Harryhausen

#14. I brought in the stories many times. I don't just do animation.

Ray Harryhausen

#15. That's why I never became a director. I never had patience with people.

Ray Harryhausen

#16. When we were growing up and saw a Ray Harryhausen movie, we were interested in how it was done. But thank God we got to go through the magic of seeing it before we knew how it was done. You were able to get this beautiful, pure, visceral response to something without knowing too much about it.

Tim Burton

#17. I write to escape; to escape poverty.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

#18. If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.

Ray Harryhausen

#19. Medusa was fascinating to work with because I gave her a snake's body so that she could pull herself with her hands which gave her a very creepy aura. I didn't want to animate cosmic gowns. Most Medusas you see in the classics have flowing robes which would be mad to even try to animate.

Ray Harryhausen

#20. I have always been very intrigued by the outside of buildings. I can just walk down the street and be content with watching facades. I don't have to go inside.

Mark Bradford

#21. When you put a big budget into a film, it doesn't necessarily mean it will be a better picture, but it does help in creating new images on the screen.

Ray Harryhausen

#22. Great science emerges out of great contradiction.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

#23. I was very limited in what I could do with flying saucers, because they're just a metal disc. I had to try and put character in as if they were intelligently guided.

Ray Harryhausen

#24. Writing is something I've always done on the side. I thought that no one would be interested, so I kept it to myself.

Finn Wittrock

#25. I was never restricted. I was never told what to do.

Ray Harryhausen

#26. I know pretty well in the broad sense what I'm going to do, because I have to know that when we shoot the live-action, so that it'll synchronize. Then I know pretty well when I get to the animation stage, what that scene requires.

Ray Harryhausen

#27. Obscure as still remains the origin of that 'genre' of romance to which the tales before us belong, there is little doubt that their models, if not their originals, were once extant at Constantinople.

Joseph Jacobs

#28. It's quite astonishing how much money people make in the hedge fund business and in the private equity field, and how well-off affluent families really are.

Kenneth Rogoff

#29. I took courses at USC in film editing and art direction and photography when I was still in high school.

Ray Harryhausen