It was lights, camera, inaction.

In advertising, I was frustrated by having to deal with the client. It was the only time I really worked in a proper office, and I didn't like it-simple as that.

It was lights, camera, inaction.

Literally overnight, I became an animator... and one that was well-known.

I was born in 1940 in Minnesota and grew up in the country... dirt roads, swamps, lakes, woods.

People used to think we just faked all that stuff... it was all written, rehearsed. The fact that it looks as cobbled together as it does is just that we weren't very good.

I was doing political cartoons and getting angry to the point where I felt I was going to have to start making and throwing bombs. I thought I was probably a better cartoonist than a bomb maker.

We did Holy Grail, and I got my name up there as one of the directors. After that, I started moving more and more down the line I wanted to, which was making movies.

They make Spy Kids, they make Scream, they make A Scary Movie. This doesn't do that, so it could be a very bad marriage. I'm trying to keep this potential nightmare quiet because we're just finishing editing.

There was a perverse side of me, with things like Van Helsing coming out. I didn't want to go down that route.

Hyperbole is something I'd better avoid.

At the first screening, there were a lot of areas that we went around and around about. Then we had our second screening. It played better. It's almost a reasonable length film now!

John Cleese was with a group called Cambridge Circus, who had come to New York, and we became friends. Years later that produced a certain team effort.

There are moments when television systems are young and haven't formed properly, and there's room for lots of original stuff. Then things become more and more top-heavy with executives who are trying to guarantee the success of things.

I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn't understand.

Actually, I began to think that maybe there is a god, after all. Or maybe it's a different one. The old one got fired.

It's been interesting how kids have had hardly any problems watching it, but adults have more trouble. This happened way back even with Jabberwocky and Time Bandits.

I was getting frustrated with America. It's interesting how as simple a thing as, like, letting your hair grow longer changed in the world in those days.

You get trapped by stories. Though I've got this reputation for being out of control, it's not true, it just happens to be a more interesting story than the truth.

I keep referring to them in the plural but all I'm dealing with is Bob. I don't know where Harvey fits in the equation. He was very present at the beginning, winding his brother up. I don't know where he is now.

We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went.

It's 85 million dollars and they got to be really careful because they are going to need me.

The whole point of animation to me is to tell a story, make a joke, express an idea. The technique itself doesn't really matter. Whatever works is the thing to use.

You know the hardest thing to do in hollywood is burn bridges. There is usually some sucker who still likes me. There is usually some sucker who will still work with me.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

It was lights, camera, inaction.

The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.

Inaction may be safe, but it builds nothing.

Creative risk taking is essential to success in any goal where the stakes are high. Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.

Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.

In this context, I believe it is an imperative for the new President to select and install his team as quickly as possible, and this does not imply that he must or should appoint members of the 'other' party to his Cabinet, which could contribute to inaction and inefficiency.

Take the word of experience, I speak the truth: inaction is safest in danger.

Use the losses and failures of the past as a reason for action, not inaction.

A computer shall not harm your work or, through inaction, allow your work to come to harm.

The Holocaust illustrates the consequences of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on a society. It forces us to examine the responsibilities of citizenship and confront the powerful ramifications of indifference and inaction.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.

Inaction may be the biggest form of action.

Action cures fear, inaction creates terror.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

Inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction.

Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

How do you defend inaction in the face of crisis? How is that defensible for anybody?