I'm an enormous admirer of Christopher Lee. He's somebody, along with Vincent Price, who I celebrate, and I wanted my movies to show that celebration and that honoring of these great film stars that were unafraid to go into horror and Grand Guignol and the macabre.

I do enjoy animated movies. I really love anime and movies like 'Spirited Away' and 'Howl's Moving Castle.'

I want people to discover my movies, and however they choose to receive it is their business.

I have dogs, and it's no secret that I find reptiles interesting, but the thing about reptiles is that they really just wanna be left alone, and I understand them. It's, 'Don't pick me up, stop holding me, don't look at me, just leave me alone.' I have to admit, sometimes I feel like that.

I think I jump around more when I'm alone.

I was always shocked when I went to the doctor's office and they did my X-ray and didn't find that I had eight more ribs than I should have or that my blood was the color green.

I think it's no secret that I've tried to take chances in my career and also in my life, and I believe to not live in fear.

It may come as a surprise to people, but I'm actually quite boring and normal. What do I do? I read books. I drive my kid to school. I have lunch with my wife. I pick my kid up from school. I go home.

I'll speak for myself, but there's a lot of humor to be found in sarcasm and darkness. You talk to any paramedic, they survive by developing a pretty off-kilter sense of humor.

Often you hear stories about never working with children. I disagree because children still have that residual magical thinking. They haven't had their imagination knocked out of them by turning into adults and life experiences.

I know there's been a lot that's been said about animated voice work, as though it's 'you can do this in your jeans and there's no camera and no pressure there. It's no big deal. It's easy.' The truth is, it's really a great test: how deep is your ability is to access your imagination?

Science fiction is a way that I can go into the abstract, go into the imagination, and audiences are still willing to go along for the ride.

I always say to myself that if I can make a movie that makes a kid smile or gives them some hope or something to get excited about, then I'm applying myself in the best way that I can. I don't think that just goes for kids. I think that it goes for adults, as well, and for families.

The web of life is a beautiful and meaningless dance. The web of life is a process with a moving goal. The web of life is a perfectly finished work of art right where I am sitting now.

A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of monopoly in the means of production.

There is no complete theory of anything.

There are gods, but there is no God; and all gods become devils eventually.

Belief is the death of intelligence.

When the rose and the cross are united the alchemical marriage is complete and the drama ends. Then we wake from history and enter eternity.

The longer one is alone, the easier it is to hear the song of the earth.

I collect human relationships very much the way others collect fine art.

The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.

The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.

The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author.

I look back into past history, the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening.

Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.

Art and music is part of what it means to be a human being. And if you're neglecting that, you're basically ignoring a huge side of the brain and a huge side of what it means to be human.

I want to do everything. That's my problem. Life is short, and I hate the idea of turning down anything. You never know what interesting experience might happen.

Stradivarius, in particular, was the most amazing craftsman and one of the great artists and scientists that ever lived because he figured out something with the sound and the science of acoustics that we still don't understand it completely.

It's interesting about classical music that the more you hear something, the more you get to know a piece, the better and better it gets, period, which is just an interesting thing on it.

At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off.

I always have loved the Stradivarius. My teacher, Josef Gingold, he had a Stradivarius. As a treat, he would put it under my chin and let me play a few notes, and I remember that feeling of the overtones, the complexity of the sound. It's like a great wine.

My teacher, Josef Gingold, a student of the French school, always loved the music of Saint-Saens and Henri Vieuxtemps and all the French repertoire.

I hope I will always have the chance to play the violin.

For some reason I can't explain, artist and musicians tend to look younger than our age. Being in music, you need this youthful sense of discovery and wonder for what you're doing and keep your imagination open. That's a youthful way of looking at life and I think that reflects in how you age.

As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.

No single man can be taken as a model for a perfect figure, for no man lives on earth who is endowed with the whole of beauty.

What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things.

Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence.

Art and nature shall always be wrestling until they eventually conquer one another so that the victory is the same stroke and line: that which is conquered, conquers at the same time.

Postmodernism surely requires an even greater grasp of symbolism, as it's increasingly an art of gesture alone.

Listen to your inner-voice: Surround yourself with loving, nurturing people. Fall in love with your art and find yourself. Music is the great communicator.

I was very famous as a young man and I celebrated both the good and bad times with drinking.

Art is not in some far-off place. A work of art is the expression of a man's whole personality, sensibility and ability.

Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus ten thousand times is skill.

What is man's ultimate direction in life? It is to look for love, truth, virtue, and beauty.

Every child grows; everything depends on the teacher.

Children learn to smile from their parents.

The ultimate art form of fashion is couture. I completely geek out when it comes to couture. It shows fashion as it used to be. I don't know how many people can actually afford the clothes, but in a way, that's beside the point.

I made a French film called 'Merry Christmas' which is a very European film. It's a World War I piece.