Tim Burton

“If I'd said, 'I'm going to be a director,' it probably wouldn't have happened.”

“I used to have a phone machine that you turn 'on' and 'off,' which was great. Now, it's so technological that it's like going down the rabbit hole.”

“Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child.”

“I find that the most special thing to me is if you've connected to people in some way: If someone comes up to you on the street and says something to you, and you know it's meant something to them, and it's connected to some project. That, I find, is amazing.”

“Movies are like an expensive form of therapy for me.”

“You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

“I never saw Frankenstein or King Kong or the Creature from the Black Lagoon as bad guys. They were the good guys.”

“Mr. Smith yelled at the doctor,What have you done to my boy?He's not flesh and blood,he's aluminum alloy!"The doctor said gently,What I'm going to saywill sound pretty wild.But you're not the father of this strange looking child.You see, there still is some questionabout the child's gender,but we think that its fatheris a microwave blender.”

“We all know interspecies romance is weird.”

“Voodoo GirlHer skin is white cloth,and she's all sewn apartand she has many colored pinssticking out of her heart.She has many different zombieswho are deeply in her trance.She even has a zombiewho was originally from France.But she knows she has a curse on her,a curse she cannot win.For if someone getstoo close to her,the pins stick farther in.”

“People say I am stuck in childhood, but it's not that. I remember seeing a Matisse retrospective, and you could see he started out one way, and then he tried something different, and then he seemed to spend his whole life trying to get back to the first thing.”

“Maybe it’s just in America, but it seems that if you’re passionate about something, it freaks people out. You’re considered bizarre or eccentric. To me, it just means you know who you are.”

“If I had a choice about going to a meeting at a studio or changing a nappy, I'd choose the nappy.”

“I've always been more comfortable making my decisions from the subconscious level, or more emotionally, because I find it is more truthful to me; Intellectually, I don't think like that because I get uncomfortable.”

“I've found that the people who play villains are the nicest people in the world, and people who play heroes are jerks. It's like people who play villains work out all their problems on screen, and then they're just really wonderful people.”

“Danny Elfman, the composer, tells me the only time he thinks I'm happy is when I'm on the scoring stage, and I see the pressure's on him and it's a little off me.”

“I get so tired of people saying, 'Oh, you only make fantasy films and this and that', and I'm like, 'Well no, fantasy is reality', that's what Lewis Carroll showed in his work.”

“Staring GirlI once knew a girlwho would just stand there and stare.At anyone or anything,she seemed not to careShe'd stare at the ground,She'd stare at the sky.She'd stare at you for hours,and you'd never know why.But after winning the local staring contest,she finally gave her eyesa well-deserved rest.”

“In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists.”

“I think a lot of kids feel alone and slightly isolated and in their own world.”