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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

There is no better way of elevating the novel than by making it into a construct which contains ideas.

Our dreams must be stronger than our memories. We must be pulled by our dreams, rater than pushed by our memories.

It's nice to be important, but it's important to always be nice.

Follow your instincts and do not let other people's opinion of you become your opinion of yourself.

When I go into making a movie, personally, I don't try to bring other pieces of movies with me.

A manager has his cards dealt to him and he must play them.

In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that because it doesn't look good on the page.

Drawing is a form of probing. And the first generic impulse to draw derives from the human need to search to plot points to place things and to place oneself.

For every person who has ever lived there has come, at last, a spring he will never see. Glory then in the springs that are yours.

I can recall, as a young adult, running through the rain forest at the Forest Reserve, at times feeling a sense of fear when I felt I was in danger. In danger of confronting an ugly snake or a coral snake, which represented the greatest fear of someone in a rural area when you traverse the forest.

What I love about sci-fi is that every generation's films are based on what we know at that point in time. We make movies about the future, but it's always based on what we have. Then, as science grows and we discover new things, so do our ideas.

Becoming a great preacher, like becoming a great artist, requires a life commitment.

Theorists have wonderful ideas which take years and years to be verified.

Storytelling is by far the most underrated skill in business.

It's all about baby steps and trying to figure out how to slowly, elegantly become an adult.

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.

I have great faith in the people of Montana; they can't be bought.

I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

I loved that these two guys argued with each other as if movies actually mattered. Nobody I knew talked about movies that way, but Siskel and Ebert took each movie as it came and talked about whether it was a success on its own terms.

I went to UC Berkeley. I graduated in 1976, immediately moved to L.A. with a degree in English - which did no more for you then than it does for you now - then sold real estate and did theater for nine years.

That's what liberalism is all about, is promoting incompetence on the basis it's fair, because people would be the best if they weren't discriminated against.

I've worked in public education for 30 years - as a teacher, a lawyer and union leader. I've visited hundreds of schools and districts. I've seen leaders from the classroom to the national stage who have been willing to set aside their differences and do the hard work that's necessary to create real, enduring change.

'Divergent,' directed by Neil Burger, displayed an admirable seriousness and some grim verve in laying out the boundaries of novelist Veronica Roth's dystopia - six segregated but ostensibly harmonious regions defined by their inhabitants' skills.

Comedy is a very personal thing, and some people will find it funny, some people won't.