Brad Bird

“I have three boys. Sometimes my wife and I really have to battle to keep video games from encroaching.”

“Usually, people begin with very clear ideas of good movies, they begin with clear ideas about their characters, and then, as they do sequels, they seem to forget the characters more and more, and try to out-spectacle.”

“I got my heroes secondhand, from television and movies, to a certain extent.”

“Animation is about creating the illusion of life. And you can't create it if you don't have one.”

“The weird thing is, if I'd made 'The Incredibles,' shot-for-shot - exactly the same script, same timing, same shots - in live action, it would be perceived very differently, and somehow more adult than me doing it in animation. I find that fascinating and frustrating.”

“I've storyboarded for things other people have shot. So thinking in shots and orchestrating shots is not foreign to me at all.”

“We make films that we ourselves would want to see and then hope that other people would want to see it. If you try to analyze audiences or think there's some sophisticated recipe for success, then I think you are doomed. You're making it too complicated.”

“I had about the biggest, longest wish list anyone could have, and 99 percent of what I wanted to get on the screen we got on the screen within our schedule and within our budget and within our resources.”

“But I don't just see the movie when I see the movie, I see all the great people who worked on it and all their hard work, because they could not have worked any harder.”

“You have to be emotionally attached to what you are doing.”

“There's some great TV, but it's kind of like dessert: It's good to have once in a while, but you can't eat it all day, or you're gonna get really fat and probably die.”

“Familiarity is all the rage. And if you're doing something that doesn't have its rhythms preset, you know, everybody's a little bit uncomfortable.”

“I see Walt Disney as kind of the epitome of a dreamer. He was a very forward thinker.”

“Making a movie is like you're behind the wheel, and you're driving through the obstacle course, and the pedal is down, and you can't brake.”

“I love the house in 'North by Northwest.'”

“Every time I started going in the direction of thinking how it might turn out, I started to just turn my brain around and not go there, because I think the surest way to guarantee that you won't win is to assume that you will.”

“Every film has a lot of questions that you don't know the answer to, and you just hope that you figure it out. But I tend to like things that are hard; I don't know why.”

“I don't know how anyone ever makes a good movie. It's a miracle every time.”

“Look, I think if you talk down to a kid or aim specifically at a kid, most kids aren't gonna like it, really, because most kids can feel when you are being patronizing.”

“And it's not only films, I'm pretty unaware of anything that's going on in popular culture right now.”