Hayao Miyazaki

“I’ve become skeptical of the unwritten rule that just because a boy and girl appear in the same feature, a romance must ensue. Rather, I want to portray a slightly different relationship, on...”

“Life is a winking light in the darkness.”

“Personally I am very pessimistic. But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can't help but bless them for a good future. Because I can't tell that child, 'Oh, you shouldn't have...”

“To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, a life. To exist here, now, means to lost the possibility of being countless other potential selves.. Yet once being born there is...”

“Once you have met someone, you never really forget them.”

“Stop trying. Take long walks. Look at scenery. Doze off at noon. Don't even think about flying. And then, pretty soon, you'll be flying again.”

“If [hand-drawn animation] is a dying craft, we can't do anything about it. Civilization moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing...”

“I do all my work by storyboard, so as I draw the storyboard, the world gets more and more complex, and as a result, my North, South, East, West directions kind of shift and go off base, but...”

“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...”

“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 hav...”

“Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions.”

“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...”

“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.”

“People in Japan have experienced many tsunamis and various earthquakes throughout the ages.”

“We get strength and encouragement from watching children.”

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

“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 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.”

“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.”