Chuck Jones's Quotes

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

The Coyote is limited, as Bugs is limited, by his anatomy.

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

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.

There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is the willingness to think.

We must not confuse distortion with innovation; distortion is useless change, art is beneficial change.

Well, directing is doing the key drawings, not the key animation, mind you.

The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds - the birds were chickens and the flowers dried sunflowers rattling against a wall.

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

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

Human beings will line up for miles to buy a bucket of catastrophes, but don't try selling sunshine and light - you'll go broke.

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.

If you want a midget to look like a baby, don't put a cigar in his mouth.

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

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.

When critics sit in judgment it is hard to tell where justice leaves off and vengeance begins.

Comedy is unusual people in real situations; farce is real people in unusual situations.

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

There's only one test of a great children's book, or a great children's film, and that is this: If it can be read or viewed with pleasure by adults, then it has the chance to be a great children's film, or a great children's book.

Comedy is a very, very, very stringent business.

Disney was not a good animator, he didn't draw well at all, but he was always a great idea man, and a good writer.

Each character represented a trait that resides in me.

Early experiences convinced me that animals can and do have quite distinct personalities.