Top 77 John Lasseter Quotes

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.

Every single Pixar film, at one time or another, has been the worst movie ever put on film. But we know. We trust our process. We don’t get scared and say, ‘Oh, no, this film isn’t working.’

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.

I’ve got Disney blood running through my veins.

There is such amazing talent at Disney. My job is 100% creative, and I am very excited to creatively lead them.

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.

Sure, they were simple desk lamps with only a minimal amount of movement, but you could immediately tell that Luxo Jr. was a baby, and that the big one was his mother. In that short little film, computer animation went from a novelty to a serious tool for filmmaking.

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.

I was mentored by great Disney animators at the end of their careers.

At Pixar, good ideas may be cut from a film, but they are never forgotten.

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.’

‘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.

‘Finding Nemo’ was originally shot in 3D.

Every movie has three things you have to do – you have to have a compelling story that keeps people on the edge of their seats; you have to populate that story with memorable and appealing characters; and you have to put that story and those characters in a believable world. Those three things are so vitally important.

Never in the history of cinema has a medium entertained an audience. It’s what you do with the medium.

You cannot base a whole movie on just the imagery alone. It has to be the story and the characters.

Sunday, for me, is all about being home with the family with no plans.

People want to be creatively satisfied, and having fun is such an important part of that.

Art challenges technology, but technology inspires the art.

I love bringing the inanimate object to life.

There was a period of time when they estimated the two biggest stars in Hollywood were Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse.

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.

To me, I would much rather be part of a healthy industry than being the only player in a dead industry.

I believe God is in the details.

I’ve noticed with my own kids, it seems like they have so much more homework than I did.

The only thing Steve Jobs has ever asked me in all the years we’ve been together and have been partners, the only thing he has ever asked me is: ‘Make it great.’

I believe in research you cannot do enough research; believability comes out of what’s real.

A good part of my leadership skills is crafted from learning from experiences early in my career that were not positive experiences.

I try to make pictures I would want to see.

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.

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.

I’m really proud of ‘Cars.’ ‘Cars,’ when it first came out, got probably the most mediocre reviews of a Pixar film.

Computers don’t create computer animation any more than a pencil creates pencil animation. What creates computer animation is the artist.

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.

Growing up, my favorite TV show was ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’, hands down.

I’m a car nut. My father was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership.

I’m a big fan of pantomime storytelling, being an animator.

At Pixar, we’ve been huge fans of any new technology that makes the viewer experience of our movies better. Blu-ray is the best yet because the picture quality, especially for our movies, is unbelievable.

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.

When Walt Disney was making his films, he trusted his instincts and made films for himself, but they appealed to everybody, not just kids.

Winnie the Pooh and his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood are among the most entertaining and beloved characters ever animated by Disney.

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.

As a filmmaker, I’m very collaborative. I don’t pretend to know everything that is needed to make a movie. What I like to do is get together with a group of people, starting with developing the story and bounce around ideas.

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.

I love working for a company full of geeks.

I’m a big Disneyland nut.

Walt Disney had always tried to get more dimension in his animation and when I saw these tapes, I thought, This is it! This is what Walt was waiting for! But when I looked around, nobody at the studio at the time was even halfway interested in it.

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.

I realized that people make cartoons for a living. It had never dawned on me that you could do this as a career.

If you think something’s stupid, it probably is.

Short films really helped me develop as a story teller, animator, and as a director.

At Pixar, we do sequels only when we come up with a great idea, and we always strive to be different than the original.

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.

When I was a freshman in high school, I read a book about the making of Disney’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ called ‘The Art of Animation.’ It was this weird revelation for me, because I hadn’t considered that people actually get paid to make cartoons.

You know, going to the movies has always been recession-proof. It’s fairly cheap entertainment; it’s classic escapism.

In overseeing both Disney and Pixar Animation, each studio has a unique culture.

Every Pixar film, when we start developing the story, it takes about four years to make one of our films.

The way the films look will never entertain an audience alone. It has to be in the service of a good story with great characters.

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.

‘Bolt’ was made by Walt Disney Animation Studios, not by Pixar.

‘Cars’ was about Lightning McQueen learning to slow down and to enjoy life. The journey is the reward.

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.

‘Cars’ is a really personal story for me because, first of all, I grew up in Los Angeles – the car crazy capital.

I never quite understood why Disney hadn’t made a sincere fairy tale since ‘Beauty and the Beast.’

I was born in 1957, so when I was a kid, there wasn’t anything called a video game. When ‘Pong’ came out, it was awesome.

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.’

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.

Fortunately for me, I’m married to an amazing woman – Nancy Lasseter – who is wise enough not to let me buy every car I want. If I was single, I would be living in a very small apartment and renting a warehouse full of cool cars.