Hayao Miyazaki Quotes

Chihiro, huh? Her real name's Chihiro? Can't beat the power of love. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Many of my movies have strong female leads- brave, self-sufficient girls that don't think twice about fighting for what they believe with all their heart. They'll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

It is the fate of modern life that we repeatedly lose touch with nature, the environment, the planet. But we try to regain it again and again. It's like a circle. In children's hearts and souls when they're born into the world, nature already exists deep inside them. So what I want to do in my work is tap into their souls ~ Hayao Miyazaki

See with eyes unclouded by hate. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Utopia exists only in one's childhood life. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

What you mean by 'peace' is nothing more than the endless repetition of human folly. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Always believe in yourself. Do this and no matter where you are, you will have nothing to fear. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

In fact, I am a pessimist. But when I'm making a film, I don't want to transfer my pessimism onto children. I keep it at bay. I don't believe that adults should impose their vision of the world on children, children are very much capable of forming their own visions. There's no need to force our own visions onto them. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

People who design machines and airplanes {or buildings}, no matter how much they believe that what they do is good, the winds of time eventually turn them into tools of industrial civilization. They're cursed dreams. Animation, too. Beautiful yet cursed dreams. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I think we should stop using nuclear power plants because it's an old system that we can't control. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

No matter how many WEAPONS you have, no matter how great your TECHNOLOGY might be, the world cannot live without LOVE. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I make films as a business, not as a cultural endeavor. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

It would be wonderful if I could see the end of civilization during my lifetime. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

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 no turning back. And I think that's exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Children understand intuitively that the world they have been born into is not a blessed world. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Since I am a person who starts work without clear knowledge of a storyline, every single scene is a pivotal scene. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Prizes do not mean anything to me. I think it is more important to make a child aware of the existence of a weird creature like a water spider that breathes through its backside. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

It's disgusting. On trains, the number of those people doing that strange masturbation-like gesture is multiplying. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I create women characters by watching the female staff at my studio. Half the staff are women. ~ 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, one where the two mutually inspire each other to live - if I'm able to, then perhaps I'll be closer to portraying a true expression of love. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I think Tokyo is going to sink under water soon. All those stupid high-rise buildings will sink and maybe all the traffic will be gone. And everything will be peaceful and quiet. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

There are so many ships in the animation sea that are computer driven, that I think we can have at least one that's just a log raft that we can row by hand. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

In our work, the question is, how much you absorb from others. So for me, creativity, is really like a relay race. As children we are handed a baton. Rather than passing it onto the next generation as is, first we need to digest it and make it our own. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

[ ... ] it would be false to say that because we're on the side of justice, we can go ahead and destroy our opponents and the world will be at peace. [ ... ] Now, I know that there are such things as good and evil in the world, and that people do good things. But people who do good things are not necessarily good people, they just happen to be people who have done good things. The next instant they might wind up doing something bad, and if we don't take that into account in our view of humans, we'll constantly make mistakes when making political decisions or decisions about ourselves. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

But remember this, Japanese boy ... airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

We live in an age when it is cheaper to buy the rights to movies than to make them. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I think it's really good for a family or children to have a dog, cat, bird or whatever to grow up with. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

On Hayao Miyazaki
I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.
"We have a word for that in Japanese," he said, "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."
Is that like the "pillow words" that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?
"I don't think it's like the "pillow word." He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, but if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb. ~ Roger Ebert

Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I would like to make a film to tell children "it's good to be alive". ~ Hayao Miyazaki

In the past, humans hesitated when they took lives, even non-human lives. But society had changed, and they no longer felt that way. As humans grew stronger, I think that we became quite arrogant, losing the sorrow of 'we have no other choice.' I think that in the essence of human civilization, we have the desire to become rich without limit, by taking the lives of other creatures. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I've never studied psychology. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

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. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

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 have to draw, as an animator, the evil figure. And it's not very pleasant to draw evil figures ~ Hayao Miyazaki

You always have to appeal to your audience. You always have to consider how well your project will do in terms of admissions. I abandoned many stories because of that. But I don't get too down about it. It's something I accepted from the time I decided to work in films. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Do everything by hand, even when using the computer. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Life is a winking light in the darkness. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Whenever someone creates something with all of their heart, then that creation is given a soul. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Nobody has the right to sit in judgment and decide what's good or bad for you. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

The villains are all parts of me. For years I've been wondering what it would be like if all those negative elements were forced onto the main character's side. I can understand a character with that kind of anger. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I think 2-D animation disappeared from Disney because they made so many uninteresting films. They became very conservative in the way they created them. It's too bad. I thought 2-D and 3-D could coexist happily. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I'm not a collector. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Cut off a wolf's head and it still has the power to bite. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Danger doesn't always come from the enemy. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Well, yes. I believe that children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It's just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Currently computer graphics are used a great deal, but it can be excessive. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

When I start creating a villain, I start liking the villain and so the villain is not really evil. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

In my grandparents' time, it was believed that spirits existed everywhere - in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything. My generation does not believe this, but I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

We get strength and encouragement from watching children. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I can't stand modern movies. The images are too weird and eccentric for me. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

The characters are born from repetition, from repeatedly thinking about them. I have their outline in my head. I become the character and as the character I visit the locations of the story many, many times. Only after that I start drawing the character, but again I do it many, many times, over and over. And I only finish just before the deadline. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I don't intentionally make deep movies. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It's produced by humans who can't stand looking at other humans. And that's why the industry is full of otaku! ~ Hayao Miyazaki

You may not like what's happening, but just accept it, and let's try to live together. Even if you feel angry, let's be patient and endure, let's try to live together. I've realized that this is the only way forward. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

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. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I believe that fantasy in the meaning of imagination is very important. We shouldn't stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind, and of the imagination. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Reality is for people that lack imagination. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

You never know how a film will play, whether it will be successful or not, or whether it will touch the audience. I always said to myself that whatever happens, big audience or small, that I would not let the results have an impact on my way of working. But it would be a bit silly for me to change my methods when I have a big success. That means my methods work well. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Is someone different at age 18 or 60? I believe one stays the same. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

There are so many things we can't do anything about if we think about generalities. Things won't go well because there is a huge gap between the generalities and the particulars. If we see generalities from the top of a mountain or from a plane, we feel it's hopeless, but if we go down, there is a nice road running about fifty meters, we feel this is a nice road, and if the weather is fine and shining, we feel we can go on ... Since the people in the community are cleaning up the river in my neighborhood, I join them when I have the time. A human can often be satisfied with the particulars. That's what I like best these days. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

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 brain cells. So that really worries me. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

People in Japan have experienced many tsunamis and various earthquakes throughout the ages. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

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. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

You should despair and run away. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

See that house with the Ivy on it? From that rooftop, what if you leapt onto the next rooftop, dashed over that blue & green wall, climbed and jumped up the pipe, ran across the roof and jumped to the next? You can, in animation.
If you could walk along the cable, you could see the other side. When you look from above, so many things reveal themselves to you. Maybe race along the concrete wall. Suddenly, there in your humdrum town there is a magical movie. Isn't it fun to see things that way? Feels like you could go somewhere far beyond…
…maybe you can… ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I like underwater life. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I believe nostalgia has many appearances and that it's not just the privilege of adults. I think children too can have nostalgia. It's one of mankind's most shared emotions. It's one of the things that makes us human. When you live, you lose things. It's a fact of life. So it's natural for everyone to have nostalgia. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Ashitaka is not a cheerful, worry-free boy. He is a melancholy boy who has a fate. I feel that I am that way myself, but until now, I have not made a film with such a character. Ashitaka was cursed for a very absurd reason. Sure, Ashitaka did something he should not have done - killing Tatari Gami. But there was enough reason to do so from the humans' viewpoint. Nevertheless, he received a deadly curse. I think that is similar to the lives of people today. I think this is a very absurd thing that is part of life itself. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Today, all of humanity's dreams are cursed somehow. Beautiful yet cursed dreams. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Its not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances. I want my young friends to live like that, and I think they, too, have such a wish. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Our lives are like the wind ... or like sounds.
We come into being, resonate with each other ...
Then fade away ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Sometimes I test myself saying, 'If I get a death sentence if I don't make this movie, would I still make this movie?' ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I wanted to convey the message to children that this life is worth living, ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Virtual reality is a denial of reality. We need to be open to the powers of imagination, which brings something useful to reality. Virtual reality can imprison people. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I find it pointless sitting in my house not working, though I like to go on extended vacations from time to time. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

In order to grow your audience, you must betray their expectations. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Whoever falls, hatred will breed hatred. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I'd like more of the world go back to being wild. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I managed to work for more than 50 years with just paper, pencils and film. My son's generation and the one coming up after can't work with just paper and pencils any more. I managed to avoid using a computer. I don't even have a cellphone. I feel lucky I managed to live like that. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

[pitching the proposal for Mononoke-hime (1997)] There cannot be a happy ending to the fight between the raging gods and humans. However, even in the middle of hatred and killings, there are things worth living for. A wonderful meeting, or a beautiful thing can exist. We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation. What we should depict is, how the boy understands the girl, and the process in which the girl opens her heart to the boy. At the end, the girl will say to the boy, "I love you, Ashitaka. But I cannot forgive humans." Smiling, the boy should say, "That is fine. Live with me. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I don't have the story finished and ready when we start work on a film. I usually don't have the time. So the story develops when I start drawing storyboards. I never know where the story will go but I just keeping working on the film as it develops. It's a dangerous way to make an animation film and I would like it to be different, but unfortunately, that's the way I work and everyone else is kind of forced to subject themselves to it. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

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 come into this life.' And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Producing an animation series merely to fill time slots in the broadcast schedule is like generating cultural pollution. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

There's an old saying, 'Look not into the heart of the Ohmu.' They say if you do, you'll never come back... ~ Hayao Miyazaki

The creation of a single world comes from a huge number of fragments and chaos. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

The principle I adhere to when directing, is that I make good use of everything my staff creates. Even if they make foregrounds that don't quite fit with my backgrounds, I never waste it and try to find the best use for it. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

I do believe in the power of story. I believe that stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, that they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners. ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Then there you are, then. The day Howl forgets to do that will be the day I believe he's really in love, and not before.
Michael to Sophie about wether or not Howl is really in love with Lettie. pg, 170 ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Tell me you didn't really watch Nausicaa."
Miho tried to keep a serious face, which must have been difficult enough in her flannel Hello Kitty pajamas. But the girl was a terrible liar. She smirked.
"No. Kiki just ended. So much for our Miyazaki marathon."
"We got through two movies," Sakura said. "Tonight, that's a marathon."
They'd wanted to watch movies tonight, just to clear their minds, and had agreed on nothing violent. All three of them loved the films of Miyazaki, who had become perhaps the most successful director in Japan while making only animated films. Kara had vetoed Howl's Moving Castle because she'd seen it too recently, and they had all seen My Neighbor Totoro far too many times, so they had started with Spirited Away. ~ Thomas Randall

Arbogast had then assembled a dream team of creative consultants and contractors to help make his bold claim a reality, luring some of the videogame industry's brightest stars away from their own companies and projects, with the sole promise of collaborating on his groundbreaking new MMOs. That was how gaming legends like Chris Roberts, Richard Garriott, Hidetaka Miyazaki, Gabe Newell, and Shigeru Miyamoto had all wound up as consultants on both Terra Firma and Armada - along with several big Hollywood filmmakers, including James Cameron, who had contributed to the EDA's realistic ship and mech designs, and Peter Jackson, whose Weta Workshop had rendered all of the in-game cinematics. ~ Ernest Cline

You are not deep and complex. You're the most 2-D person I've ever met in my life. Miyazaki drew you and threw you straight on the scrap pile because you look too anime ~ Richard Rider

You'll see why, in animation circles, Miyazaki himself is considered one of the gods. ~ David Ansen