Pixar Quotes

Working at Pixar has been like my graduate school for screenwriting. ~ Michael Arndt

I like doing everything. That's why I came to Pixar, as opposed to Disney or any other studio - it's small. At the time I started, I was, like, the 10th person in the animation group, and we all had to do everything. That's the way I like it, keeping it fresh. ~ Pete Docter

We can still do a stop motion feature for about one-third of what it costs Pixar or DreamWorks or Blue Sky to make a feature. But nobody is interested in a film that cost $50 to 60 million with the potential to do $120 million. They want to risk big money to make huge money. ~ Henry Selick

As far as I know, the guys at Pixar are opposed to a Monsters, Inc. sequel. ~ John Goodman

We know screwups are an essential part of making something good. That's why Pixar's goal is to screw up as fast as possible. ~ Lee Unkrich

Most Pixar films are better than most live action films. ~ Wesley Morris

Pixar has announced Larry the Cable Guy will be starring in Cars 3 thru 6. Howie Mandel will be playing his sidekick, Mopey the Moped. ~ Andy Kindler

I'll watch a Pixar movie over and over and over again. I'll be with friends of mine who have kids, that want to watch 'Finding Nemo,' and I'm like, 'Yeah, okay, let's watch 'Nemo' again, for the seven billionth time!,' because they're amazing movies. ~ Zachary Levi

The thing that drives me and my colleagues at both Apple and Pixar is that you see something very compelling to you, and you don't quite know how to get to it, but you know, sometimes intuitively, it's within your grasp. And it's worth putting in years of your life to make it come into existence. ~ Steve Jobs

This was a revelation to me: The good stuff was hiding the bad stuff. I realized that this was something I needed to look out for: When downsides coexist with upsides, as they often do, people are reluctant to explore what's bugging them, for fear of being labeled complainers. I also realized that this kind of thing, if left unaddressed, could fester and destroy Pixar. For me, this discovery was bracing. Being on the lookout for problems, I realized, was not the same as seeing problems. This would be the idea - the challenge - around which I would build my new sense of purpose. ~ Ed Catmull

The first 'Monsters, Inc.' represents starting at Pixar for me, I have a special place in my heart for it. So to be able to tell a story with those ideas is an honor. ~ Dan Scanlon

I loved DreamWorks and Pixar, and I still love kids' films. ~ Taron Egerton

Well, we try to - we definitely try to have a balance. And I think things have gotten a lot better at Pixar. When we did "Toy Story," that was an all hands on deck situation that really was time intensive. ~ Pete Docter

We work very hard in all of the Pixar films to not make anything in the imagery that causes people to think of something other than the story. ~ John Lasseter

Most people know me at Pixar as the guy that doesn't like to do sequels or very reluctant to do sequels. ~ Andrew Stanton

Hand-drawn animation is something that I feel really strongly about. A Pixar movie may be really great, but it looks like it was drawn by a machine. ~ Bill Plympton

Pixar has been compared to fine furniture makers who polish the backs of drawers - even if you don't see everything in a particular scene, you still feel that every little detail has been met. ~ John Lasseter

Steve Jobs is like a brother to me and he's one of the founders of Pixar, and when the first iPad came out, I got one right away. ~ John Lasseter

Pixar films are not realistic. They are believable for the worlds we are creating. ~ John Lasseter

The saddest day in Pixar history was when some guy said 'get Larry the Cable Guy on the phone. ~ Andy Kindler

Why would I ever want to run Disney? Wouldn't it make more sense just to sell them Pixar and retire? ~ Steve Jobs

We [film supervisors] always try to encourage discussion in the room because a lot of times newer animators who are just out of school or people come from other studios, they're gonna have different points of view and we want to make sure we're vetting all the ideas to get the best ones. A lot of people are shy about speaking up if this is their first time at Pixar or if they don't have a lot of experience, so we try to encourage that. ~ Victor Navone

Probably more than any other movie we've made here at Pixar, 'Up' was the one we were the most nervous about. ~ John Lasseter

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

I think Pixar has the opportunity to be the next Disney
not replace Disney
but be the next Disney. ~ Steve Jobs

When Pixar calls and says, 'Hey, you wanna be in a Pixar movie?' you don't do a lot of contemplating! ~ Larry The Cable Guy

I had never touched a computer in my life before I came to Pixar. ~ Andrew Stanton

I play a lot of computer games. I love computer graphics. I've had Pixar in me for a long time. ~ Robin Williams

it seemed like every issue, big or small, that arose around this time was chalked up to the merger: "You said things wouldn't change! You're breaking your word! We don't want to lose the old Pixar!" I should say that this outcry came despite the fact that the measures we had put in place to protect Pixar's culture were working - and, in my view, were a model for how to maintain cultural integrity after a merger. ~ Ed Catmull

It's hard dealing with day to day disappointments and feeling like you can't find success. Especially when your best friend is Pixar. ~ Dane Cook

By this point Jobs had poured close to $50 million of his own money into Pixar - more than half of what he had pocketed when he cashed out of Apple - and he was still losing money at NeXT. He was hard-nosed about it; he forced all Pixar employees to give up their options as part of his agreement to add another round of personal funding in 1991. But he was also a romantic in his love for what artistry and technology could do together. ~ Walter Isaacson

I'm really proud of 'Cars.' 'Cars,' when it first came out, got probably the most mediocre reviews of a Pixar film. ~ John Lasseter

Everything I do and everything Pixar does is based on a simple rule: Quality is the best business plan, period. ~ John Lasseter

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

Once we can do Pixar-quality graphics rendered in real time with interactivity, I could see games costing $200 million to make, and all of a sudden you have to sell a lot of games just to break even, so I'm a little worried someone's going to do that. ~ Warren Spector

I feel kind of fortunate that over the last 25 years I've been in almost every Disney/Pixar film. ~ Bob Bergen

I love the Sonoma wine community. It's like Pixar - nothing competitive, only supportive. They're always rooting for you. ~ John Lasseter

In the thirteenth chapter of Creativity, Inc., Catmull talks about how the leadership teams at Disney and Pixar found solutions to the problems that arose during the merge of the two companies. They solved the problem by asking everyone who worked in the company for solutions rather than just leaving it up to the executives, which became known as Notes Day. ~ Top 50 Facts

At Pixar, 'Wall-E' was our ninth film, and they've all been successes - more than that, they've all really touched people. Everybody wonders, 'How do you do it?' Well, how do you not do it? You just work hard. ~ John Lasseter

So [Steve Jobs] had the Pixar building designed to promote encounters and unplanned collaborations ... "to make people get out of their offices and mingle in the central atrium with people they might not otherwise see." The front doors and main stairs and corridors all led to the atrium, the cafe and the mailboxes were there, the conference rooms had windows that looked out onto it, and the six-hundred-seat theater and two smaller screening rooms all spilled into it. "Steve's theory worked from day one, "Lasseter recalled. "I kept running into people I hadn't seen for months. I've never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one. ~ Walter Isaacson

I believe in research. Each movie at Pixar involves research with college professors or taking trips to learn as much as we can about a particular subject matter. ~ John Lasseter

Quality is the best business plan. ~ John Lasseter

His goal was to be vigilant against " the bozo explosion" that leads to a company's being larded with second rate talent:

For most things in life, the range between best and average is 30% or so. The best airplane flight, the best meal, they may be 30% better than your average one. What I saw with Woz was somebody who was fifty times better than the average engineer. He could have meetings in his head. The Mac team was an attempt to build a whole team like that, A players. People said they wouldn't get along, they'd hate working with each other. But I realized that A players like to work with A players, they just didn't like working with C players. At Pixar, it was a whole company of A players. When I got back to Apple, that's what I decided to try to do. You need to have a collaborative hiring process. When we hire someone, even if they're going to be in marketing, I will have them talk to the design folks and the engineers. My role model was J. Robert Oppenheimer. I read about the type of people he sought for the atom bomb project. I wasn't nearly as good as he was, but that's what I aspired to do. ~ Walter Isaacson

There's a lot of imagination in Asia, and I believe that the next Google will come from there, and the next Pixar. I believe that the great new media companies will come out of Asia and surpass the big media conglomerates that exist right now in the West. ~ Shekhar Kapur

Had the rights to make all the sequels and exploit the characters. I made a presentation that said, here's the 15% of Pixar that Disney does not already own. So that's ~ Walter Isaacson

But the world of Despicable Me is such a cartoony world. It is much more Looney Tunes than I would say the Pixar world or those movies. We can get away with a little more, although I know some people responded negatively to the Iron Maiden beat in the first movie where it looks like Edith. ~ Cinco Paul

I saw some Pixar movies like 'The Incredibles' and thought, 'This is extraordinary. These are some of the best movies I've seen.' ~ Michael Keaton

Pixar is seen by a lot of folks as an overnight success, but if you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time. ~ Steve Jobs

I would say that Pixar is doing for animation what Chaplin did for film, infusing it with heart and characters that you care about and stories that you lose yourself in. They are similar revolutionaries and changing a medium. ~ Rob McClure

I believe that there is no greater enemy to vital life-breathing faith than insisting on cultural sameness. When fear rules your theology, God is nowhere to be found in your paradigm, no matter how many Bible verses you tack onto it. I think that as parents we would be more effective in our parenting if we leveled with our children, if we told them that some of our dearly held rules are not morally grounded but are made for our convenience. I know that many times when I insist that my children turn off the video, my "rules" are the result of my own noise-sensitivity, not some moral abhorrence about Pixar or Disney. I never know how to respond to the women who tell me that they need to be in a church made of people with whom they can identify, people who are like them. ~ Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

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

If I knew in 1986 how much it was going to cost to keep Pixar going, I doubt if I would have bought the company. ~ Steve Jobs

When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don't understand creativity. They don't appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability of an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feel for which five might be successful. And they think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they've not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are. On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology. They think they can just go out and hire a few tech folks. But that would be like Apple trying to hire people to produce music. We'd get second-rate A&R people, just like the music companies ended up with second-rate tech people. I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline. ~ Walter Isaacson

I don't want to fail, of course. But even though I didn't know how bad things really were, I still had a lot to think about before I said yes. I had to consider the implications for Pixar, for my family, for my reputation. I decided that I didn't really care, because this is what I want to do. If I try my best and fail, well, I've tried my best. ~ Steve Jobs

Predictions that digital tools would allow workers to telecommute were never fully realized. One of Marissa Mayer's first acts as CEO of Yahoo! was to discourage the practice of working from home, rightly pointing out that "people are more collaborative and innovative when they're together." When Steve Jobs designed a new headquarters for Pixar, he obsessed over ways to structure the atrium, and even where to locate the bathrooms, so that serendipitous personal encounters would occur. Among his last creations was the plan for Apple's new signature headquarters, a circle with rings of open workspaces surrounding a central courtyard. Throughout history ~ Walter Isaacson

I'm not as successful as Pixar or Dreamworks, and that is disappointing to me, because I think my films are as valid as a Pixar film. I think there's an audience for my films. I know there's a market for someone like Quentin Tarantino, who basically does adult cartoons in live action. ~ Bill Plympton

Pixar has outdone itself in visual magic and vivid storytelling. ~ Peter Travers

First, it created an electronic suggestion box where Pixar people could submit discussion topics they thought would help us become more innovative and more efficient. Immediately, topic ideas began flooding in, along with suggestions about how to run Notes Day itself. ~ Ed Catmull

How can you say anything other than Ratatouille is Pixar's best movie? Your a chef, for Christ's sake," Sue said.
Lou smiled at Sue's accusatory tone. She needed this distraction.
Harley rolled his eyes and said, "You're letting your biases show, Sue. Up uses music better- like a character. The opening fifteen minutes is some of the best filmmaking- ever. And who doesn't love a good squirrel joke?"
"But Ratatouille brings it all back to food." Sue waved a carrot in the air to emphasize her point. "They made you want to eat food cooked by a rat! I'd eat the food; it looked magnificent. That rat cooked what he loved; what tasted good. Like I've been telling Lou, we should cook food from the heart, not just the cookbook. ~ Amy E. Reichert

In some ways, 'The Little Mermaid' was old-fashioned. Rendered in the hand-drawn style, it was the last Disney animated feature to use cels and Xeroxing. Pixar and its CGI imitators soon made that rigorous process obsolete. ~ Richard Corliss

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. ~ John Lasseter

Working at Pixar you learn the really honest, hard way of making a great movie, which is to surround yourself with people who are much smarter than you, much more talented than you, and incite constructive criticism; you'll get a much better movie out of it. ~ Andrew Stanton

Pixar started as a company that sold a special computer for doing digital animation; it took a while till they got into the moviemaking business. Similarly, Starbucks originally sold only coffee beans and coffee equipment; they hadn't planned to sell coffee by the cup. ~ Reid Hoffman

Pixar is not about computers, it's about people. ~ John Lasseter

What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that, when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it. This, more than any elaborate party or turreted workstation, is why I love coming to work in the morning. It is what motivates me and gives me a definite sense of mission. ~ Ed Catmull

People will turn their noses up at a sequel or that type of thing, but Pixar really works hard - if they're making a sequel - to make a sequel an original movie, to make it an original story. ~ Dan Scanlon

Everyone at Junction Point has been inspired by the creative folks at Pixar and Disney Feature Animation to make 'entertainment for everyone.' ~ Warren Spector

The silliness-much of which is clearly intentional-is blended with some genuine grandeur. The Pixar touch is evident in the precision of the visual detail and in the wit and energy of Michael Giacchino's score, but the quality control that has been exercised over this project also has a curiously undermining effect. The movie eagerly sells itself as semitrashy, almost-campy fun, but it is so lavish and fussy that you can't help thinking that it wants to be taken seriously, and therefore you laugh at, rather than with, its mock sublimity. ~ A.O. Scott

I think, in Japan, animation isn't relegated to being a genre unto itself. It's just a medium by which you can tell any number of stories, be it horror or action or adventure or drama or whatever, and we're trying to do that as well. Every film that you go see from Pixar, we're hoping is a little bit of a surprise. ~ Pete Docter

at Pixar, Steve couldn't shape the culture. He wasn't the founder, and even as owner, he could not change the company to reflect his image and sensibilities. It already had a culture. It already had a leader. Its cohesive and collaborative team knew exactly what it wanted to do. ~ Brent Schlender

I felt a particular attachment, naturally, to the Superman character and really dug deep, but at the same time, I am a passionate fan, be it Star Wars, be it the entire Marvel catalog, be it the DC catalog, or the original thinking at Pixar. I'm a fan first, so I'm always curious to see the way people express themselves and how it's being done. ~ Joseph McGinty Nichol

At Pixar, I don't have to compromise at all. When I look at the finished "Toy Story 3," I don't sit and constantly think, oh, the actor was having a bad day, or oh, it rained and we couldn't use that set. The story that I wanted to tell is what is on screen, and I haven't had to compromise it one iota. ~ Lee Unkrich

Internet services at Apple, Jobs's wingman in dealing with content companies. ANDREA "ANDY" CUNNINGHAM. Publicist at Regis McKenna's firm who handled Apple in the early Macintosh years. MICHAEL EISNER. Hard-driving Disney CEO who made the Pixar deal, then clashed with Jobs. LARRY ELLISON. CEO of Oracle and personal friend of Jobs. ~ Walter Isaacson

I love all the Pixar movies, and I like 'Happy Feet Two.' 'Cause it has a lot of babies. ~ Quvenzhane Wallis

'Bolt' was made by Walt Disney Animation Studios, not by Pixar. ~ John Lasseter

The way we work at Pixar is we write the script, but then we quickly move on into story reel, which is basically like a comic-book version of the film. And then we do our own dialogue and music and sound effects, all in an effort to be able to basically sit in the theater and watch the movie before we shoot it, essentially. ~ Pete Docter

I don't think at Pixar we'd ever make something that was too scary for general audiences. ~ Dan Scanlon

At Pixar, we do a million versions of the movie, and every one of them goes through their awkward teenage phase where it's terrible and doesn't make sense, and we just keep working on it. ~ Dan Scanlon

The thing about working at Pixar is that everyone around you is smarter and funnier and cleverer than you and they all think the same about everyone else. It's a nice problem to have. ~ Andrew Stanton

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. ~ John Lasseter

Story telling is joke telling. ~ Andrew Stanton

The very first thing I saw at this year's Telluride Film Festival was sheer bliss. "Lava," a musical romance from Pixar Animation, was one of the shorts that traditionally precede almost every festival screening; the director was James Ford Murphy. The story, spanning millions of years in 7 minutes, starts with a lonely Hawaiian volcano who, crooning to ukulele accompaniment, yearns for "someone to lava. ~ Anonymous

Every Pixar movie at one time was the worst motion picture ever made. ~ John Lasseter

There's the animation ghetto of feature films in this country. There's this flavor at DreamWorks, and Pixar does their own thing, and generally they're safe. But if you look at Walt Disney's original films, at the time and in the context, they weren't safe. They were really dark and troubling. ~ Henry Selick

A Mozart symphony is very much like a Pixar movie - in the sense that Pixar movies are hugely successful because they operate on several levels at the same time. ~ Eric Weiner