I'm a fan of the western genre. When I see a character actor, I see a whole movie behind a scene before and after. There's a whole other movie behind it.

If you imagine yourself as a craftsman at ILM, you spend your days tumbling buses and animating shards of glass. You're doing a lot of visual effects work.

My respect for animation has gone way up. It's a truckload of work. I have to sit with my animators the same way I'd sit with my actors and cast them.

My respect for artists is very high. I think to get the most out of them, you have to liberate them. I think part of liberating them is saying, 'Come up with something brilliant, new, and fresh. Stop thinking based on what has been beat into you by executives or publishers in terms of what's going to work and what's not. Don't react, just act.'

My respect for Westerns have gone way, way up. It's hard and treacherous work. It's hard to find people these days who can ride horses like that and jump onto trains.

On a live-action movie, things happen that are unexpected. In animation, you have to fabricate the feeling. That takes a tremendous amount of nuance until the film becomes sentient and gives back.

Raising kids these days is hard. I'm the second to last child in my family. I think it's tough; I have two kids, I see them and I feel like I see things in them; they awaken the inner child in you.

This is the story, this is your character, I have the sense of the landscape, I have the sense of the scene, I have all that stuff. But I'm also looking for something else to happen, an accident or something. You're focused on the story you intend to tell and then you have to have a peripheral net out to catch these accidents.

Today we're just growing and consuming, and I think maybe there's a sadness in that. People are longing for a time when there was a black and white and good and bad.

When I speak of drama, I'm really referring to just 'desperately trying not to be ordinary'. Trying to get something that has a little bit of friction, conflict, absurdity.

Animation is a technique, not a genre.

Drama is drama, and it's really... if it's something small, you put a magnifying glass up to it; if it's something big, you use a wide lens.

Everyone always wants to find the answer, to feel that things are resolved. But in dreams, maybe there isn't an answer so much.

I always wanted to do an animated movie. I find it to be incredibly liberating as a way of telling a story.

I just think it's growth when you pursue something you're not sure you can do.

I think my parents gave me a love of learning; from there you set out on your own path.

I think when you get people who are really talented and you take them out of their comfort zone, you get a lot more out of them.

I think you can never ever lie, ever. If you don't know, say, 'I don't know'.

I'd love to do a PG-13 animated adventure. It would be great.

It's a mistake for Hollywood to impose themselves on the gaming space. Not only is it arrogant, but it hasn't really worked.