Chuck Jones Quotes

I have come to know Bugs so well that I no longer have to think about what he is doing in any situation.

Painting does what we cannot do - it brings a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional plane.

If you were to draw Bugs, the easiest way is to learn how to draw a carrot and then hook a rabbit onto it

The road is better than the end.

The only thing an adult can give a child is time.

Every great artist must begin by learning to draw with the single line, and my advice to young animators is to learn how to live with that razor-sharp instrument or art. An artist who comes to me with eight or ten good drawings of the human figure in simple lines has a good chance of being hired. But I will tell the artist who comes with a bunch of drawings of Bugs Bunny to go back and learn how to draw the human body. An artist who knows that can learn how to draw ANYTHING, including Bugs Bunny.

You can't force inspiration. It's like trying to catch a butterfly with a hoop but no net. If you keep your mind open and receptive, though, one day a butterfly will land on your finger.

An idea has no worth at all without believable characters to implement it; a plot without characters is like a tennis court without players. Daffy Duck is to a Buck Rogers story what John McEnroe was to tennis. Personality. That is the key, the drum, the fife. Forget the plot.

Anyone can negatively criticize - it is the cheapest of all comment because it requires not a modicum of the effort that suggestion requires.

The whole essence of good drawing - and of good thinking, perhaps - is to work a subject down to the simplest form possible and still have it believable for what it is meant to be.

Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace. If you have a single-minded need for something, let it be the unusual, the esoteric, the bizarre, the unexpected.

The name 'Chuck Jones', according to my uncle, limited my choice of profession to second baseman or cartoonist.

The only time a wife listens to her husband is when he's asleep.

I started reading when I was about three, a little over three.

Animation means to invoke life, not to imitate it.

The rules are simple. Take your work, but never yourself, seriously. Pour in the love and whatever skill you have, and it will come out.

A lion's work hours are only when he's hungry, once he's satisfied the predator and prey live peacefully together

The older I get, the more individuality I find in animals and the less I find in humans.

[W]hen the coyote falls, he gets up and brushes himself off; it's preservation of dignity. He's humiliated, and it worries him when he ends up looking like an accordion. A coyote isn't much, but it's better than being an accordion.

Each character represented a trait that resides in me.

In 1918, when I was 6 or 7 years old, radio was just coming into use in the Great War.

You've got a million bad drawings in you; you better get started.

The weatherman is not only blamed for his failure to foretell, he is blamed for the weather itself.

Everything on Saturday morning [cartoons] moves alike that's one of the reasons it's not animation. The drawings are different, but everybody acts the same way, their feet move the same way, and everybody runs the same way. It doesn't matter whether it's an alligator or a man or a baby or anything, they all move the same.

A comedian is not a person who opens a funny door - he's the person who opens a door funny.

All of you have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them, the better it will be for everyone.

If you make a fool of yourself in front of a cat, he will sneer at you, if you are sober; he will leave the room if you are drunk. If you make a fool of yourself in front a dog, he will make a fool of himself, too.

Fog and smog should not be confused and are easily separated by color.

Once you have heard a strange audience burst into laughter at a film you directed, you realize what the word joy is all about.

Comedy is a very, very, very stringent business.