Top 100 Lasseter's Quotes
#1. 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
#2. I love the Sonoma wine community. It's like Pixar - nothing competitive, only supportive. They're always rooting for you.
John Lasseter
#3. Pixar's short films convinced Disney that if the company could produce memorable characters within five minutes, then the confidence was there in creating a feature film with those abilities in story and character development.
John Lasseter
#4. Every Pixar movie at one time was the worst motion picture ever made.
John Lasseter
#5. I loved animation and cartoons, even when it was not cool when you were in high school. I raced home to see the Bugs Bunny cartoons.
John Lasseter
#6. In an animated film you can do whatever you want, but that doesn't mean you should do everything you want.
John Lasseter
#7. The magic of Disneyland, walking through the tunnel underneath the train station to Main Street, it just transports you to other places and other times.
John Lasseter
#8. I think 'Disney Infinity' is exciting. It's hard to even call it a video game, because it's so different. What excites me about this is how it's going to put more and more of what happens in the game into the hands of the user; it's up to them. You can play it to where everything's laid out for you.
John Lasseter
#9. I love the work of Hayao Miyazaki. 'My Neighbor Totoro' and 'Castle in the Sky' are two of the great films that he's made that I just love.
John Lasseter
#10. My mother was a high school arts teacher, so I was always surrounded by the arts.
John Lasseter
#11. I think that as I had children, I have five sons, and they got into video games and were the prime ages through the development of video games. It was so much fun seeing them play the games and seeing it through their eyes.
John Lasseter
#12. Slice open one of my veins and cartoons will pour out; open another vein and you'll get a flood of motor oil.
John Lasseter
#13. I realized that people make cartoons for a living. It had never dawned on me that you could do this as a career.
John Lasseter
#14. I am so proud that 'Up' is Pixar's 10th film. I think it's the funniest film that we've ever made and also one of the most beautiful.
John Lasseter
#15. I am, by nature, an honest person. I wear my emotions on my sleeve. There is no 'behind closed doors' with me.
John Lasseter
#16. Steve Jobs is like a brother to me and he's one of the founders of Pixar, and when the first iPad came out, I got one right away.
John Lasseter
#17. I always loved the idea of a spy movie and part of it came from my personal love of spy movies. It started when I was growing up as a little kid in the 60s.
John Lasseter
#19. You never hear of a live-action studio that has been making so-so films looking over at a studio that's making great movies and going, 'Oh, we see the difference - we're using a different camera.'
John Lasseter
#20. When you set out to really entertain adults as well as kids, your audience is basically anybody who is breathing.
John Lasseter
#21. One of the big moments of my life was watching 'Star Wars' on its opening weekend in Hollywood. I was watching all these people enjoy this film, and I thought: animation can do this.
John Lasseter
#22. What I love about Goofy is the flesh on his cheeks. You can almost feel it.
John Lasseter
#23. I believe once you watch a Miyazaki film, you'll get hooked.
John Lasseter
#25. The interstate highway system was built to get people from point A to point B as fast as possible. And they knocked down mountains and filled valleys and made everything nice and big and flat, and they bypassed every town.
John Lasseter
#26. My brother liked sewing and sculpting and making things, and my sister sewed and painted and cooked and baked. She's a professional baker now and makes the most gorgeous sculpture-like cakes. She's the queen of wedding cakes in the Lake Tahoe area.
John Lasseter
#27. John [Lasseter] always said that he was Andy, and Joe [Ranft] and I were Sid, and I think that's true.
Andrew Stanton
#28. Pixar has invented much of computer animation as it's known today, and I've been very lucky to be the first traditional animator to work with computer animation.
John Lasseter
#29. People who get into animation tend to be kids. We don't have to grow up. But also, animators are great observers, and there's this childlike wonder and interest in the world, the observation of little things that happen in life.
John Lasseter
#30. The greatest bad guys, you understand where they're coming from. They believe they're doing the right thing. Sometimes it's for greed, sometimes it's for other reasons, but they are what they call the center of good. They always believe they're doing the right thing.
John Lasseter
#31. When you take something that's inert, and through motion, give it life, make it appear to be alive, living, breathing thinking and having emotions, that's animation. But when you take something that's live-action, and move a part of it, that's a special effect.
John Lasseter
#32. I always felt a little bit like a little kid that's never grown up in the world of adults.
John Lasseter
#33. Car love is the sound of a throaty V-8 rumbling and revving, the acceleration throwing you back in the seat - especially when you get on a beautiful, winding road and the light's dappling through the trees.
John Lasseter
#34. You know, going to the movies has always been recession-proof. It's fairly cheap entertainment; it's classic escapism.
John Lasseter
#35. 'Cars 2' is about a character learning to be himself. There's times in our lives where people always say, 'Well, you've gotta act differently. You should always be yourself.' That's the emotional core of the story.
John Lasseter
#36. We make the kind of movies we like to watch. I love to laugh. I love to be amazed by how beautiful it is. But I also love to be moved to tears. There's lots of heart in our films.
John Lasseter
#37. If you think something's stupid, it probably is.
John Lasseter
#38. I believe in research you cannot do enough research; believability comes out of what's real.
John Lasseter
#39. Take any movie with an actor you like. Turn your head and just listen to the performance. In some cases, the physical presence remains as strong when you can't see the actor, when it's just the voice.
John Lasseter
#40. The Walt Disney Animation studio is the studio that Walt Disney started himself in 1923, and it's never stopped and never closed its doors and never stopped making animation, and it keeps going as kind of the heart and soul of the company.
John Lasseter
#41. It's so important to create in your own voice, to hold onto what makes you unique, and have faith in your vision.
John Lasseter
#42. The closer you get to reality, the harder it is to make it look convincing to the audience. That's why I tend to make things [films] that are a little bit more caricature.
John Lasseter
#43. Pixar is not about computers, it's about people.
John Lasseter
#44. One of the things about animation is it's so expensive to do the animation, that you can't produce coverage. You only have one chance to make every shot.
John Lasseter
#45. There's never a wrong idea. You just keep throwing stuff out and inevitably there are elements of different things that inspire a character or environment.
John Lasseter
#46. I love Japan. I love the collision of the modern and ancient worlds coming together in that place. It's so high-tech and cool.
John Lasseter
#47. You can achieve all the things you want to do, but it's much better to do it with loved ones around you; family and friends, people that you care about that can help you on the way and can celebrate you, and you can enjoy the journey.
John Lasseter
#48. Never in the history of cinema has a medium entertained an audience. It's what you do with the medium.
John Lasseter
#49. When I look at the success I have, it's because of my creative-thinking skills.
John Lasseter
#50. Directing is one of my favourite things to do because I love telling stories and I love working with the individual artists and it's something that I really missed.
John Lasseter
#51. You make a movie to entertain audiences. That's why you make a movie. The product sales is because people love the characters, and to me, that is a testament to how our movie has become so ingrained in family's homes all around the world and that's why I make movies.
John Lasseter
#52. When Walt Disney was making his films, he trusted his instincts and made films for himself, but they appealed to everybody, not just kids.
John Lasseter
#53. The more we all help each other, the more we all benefit. So go out there. Help others.
John Lasseter
#54. In dire economic times, movies are relatively inexpensive entertainment for the whole family.
John Lasseter
#56. Humor is the easiest to achieve; the 'heart' is always the toughest, because you can't tell people to feel a certain way.
John Lasseter
#57. Toys are put on this Earth to be played with by a child.
John Lasseter
#59. I believe in research. Each movie at Pixar involves research with college professors or taking trips to learn as much as we can about a particular subject matter.
John Lasseter
#60. 'Bambi' is an amazing film, and when you watch it today, it's just as beautiful. It's timeless. It's just as beautiful today as it was back then.
John Lasseter
#61. I've often heard people say that managing creative people is the hardest thing in the world. 'They're never happy, they drive up the cost of things, blah blah blah.' I just manage people the way I always wanted to be managed. That is, to be creatively challenged, but never to be told what to do.
John Lasseter
#63. Of all bugs, growing up I just loved the pill bugs. They roll up, you play with them, you wait for them to open up, and then when you touch them they roll up again. I just love that.
John Lasseter
#64. I worry about kids today not having time to build a tree house or ride a bike or go fishing. I worry that life is getting faster and faster.
John Lasseter
#65. Pixar has been compared to fine furniture makers who polish the backs of drawers - even if you don't see everything in a particular scene, you still feel that every little detail has been met.
John Lasseter
#66. I believe in the nobility of entertaining people and I take great, great pride that people are willing to give me two or three hours of their busy lives.
John Lasseter
#67. When you really study espionage movies, or spy movies, the beginnings are really set up to have, like, an amazing bit of action, but at the moment you're watching it, you have no idea why or what it's about.
John Lasseter
#68. At Pixar, after every movie we have postmortum meetings where we discuss what worked and what didn't work.
John Lasseter
#69. The specific influences on villains to me is, I love the villains who are really hyper-smart. When at the end of the movie you find out what they were about, and it makes absolutely perfect sense from their point of view.
John Lasseter
#73. Look at the films of Walt Disney: 'Snow White' came out in February 1938, and I can't think of another film from that year that's watched as much. The same is true of 'Bambi,' 'Dumbo' ... even, frankly, 'Toy Story,' which is probably watched more than any other movie of 1995.
John Lasseter
#74. Computers don't create computer animation any more than a pencil creates pencil animation. What creates computer animation is the artist.
John Lasseter
#75. But the truth is, at some point, our films - almost every single one of them - are really bad. And it's largely hats off to John Lasseter and Ed Catmull who have set up a system whereby they're expecting it.
Pete Docter
#76. One of the big technical advances that's really great looking is the water.
John Lasseter
#77. To me, I would much rather be part of a healthy industry than being the only player in a dead industry.
John Lasseter
#78. I don't really think of myself as a businessman at all. That's why I have the 'chief creative officer' role.
John Lasseter
#79. Rotten Tomatoes is such a great website, in that it has one foot in the Internet world and one foot in the cinema world, and it keeps its grounding between them just perfectly.
John Lasseter
#80. I'm really proud of 'Cars.' 'Cars,' when it first came out, got probably the most mediocre reviews of a Pixar film.
John Lasseter
#81. What's fun about the story development at Pixar is it's a journey. You don't just write a script and then that's the movie you make. It's just constant evolution and being open to that and that collaboration with the voice actors and with the artists and animators at Pixar.
John Lasseter
#82. I always laugh at these companies that have these rules saying, 'You're only allowed to have this or that on your desk.' It's no fun to work at a place like that.
John Lasseter
#83. Pixar films are not realistic. They are believable for the worlds we are creating.
John Lasseter
#84. I'm the biggest fan of animation. I love the history of animation, I know it well.
John Lasseter
#85. Art challenges technology, but technology inspires the art.
John Lasseter
#86. When you're a director, you really live whatever you do.
John Lasseter
#87. Nobody pays attention to the way a person's shirt folds around his shoulder when they sit down, but if that shirt folded in an unusual way, you'd notice it.
John Lasseter
#88. The spirit of Route 66 is in the details: every scratch on a fender, every curl of paint on a weathered billboard, every blade of grass growing up through a cracked street.
John Lasseter
#89. In overseeing both Disney and Pixar Animation, each studio has a unique culture.
John Lasseter
#90. It's the nature of Hollywood that there are the people in power and the people who tell them what they want them to hear.
John Lasseter
#91. 'Cars' was about Lightning McQueen learning to slow down and to enjoy life. The journey is the reward.
John Lasseter
#92. The hardest thing to get is true emotion. I always believe you need to earn that with the audience. You can't just tell them, 'Ok, be sad now.'
John Lasseter
#93. When I started work with LucasArts Computer Division back in 1984, I went to the Palace of Fine Arts and saw the Festival of Animation for the first time. I loved the diverse collection of animated films the festival held.
John Lasseter
#94. I love 3-D. I have been a big fan of 3-D for a long, long time. I took my 1988 wedding pictures in 3-D!
John Lasseter
#95. We use shorts at the studio extensively to develop talent. I always love to give opportunities for young story people, animators, layout people something like that to take the next step up in their career and try things out.
John Lasseter
#96. I do what I do because of Walt Disney. Goofy. Mickey Mouse. I never forgot how their films entertained me.
John Lasseter
#97. I believe that, by directing, it makes me a better executive as well.
John Lasseter
#98. Disney Infinity gives you the ability to be creative in a way that nobody's ever seen before.
John Lasseter
#99. In computer animation, every detail has to be thought out, designed, modeled, shaded, placed and lit. The more you add, the more computer memory you need.
John Lasseter
#100. This is what I always tell my filmmakers-you have to do tons of research, because you don't know where the inspiration is going come from.
John Lasseter
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