Hayao Miyazaki
To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, a life. To exist here, now, means to lost the possibility of being countless other potential selves.. Yet once being born there is no turning back. And I think that's exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us.Collection: Mean
Nobody has the right to sit in judgment and decide what's good or bad for you.Collection: Judgment
Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over.Collection: Japan
Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It's produced by humans who can't stand looking at other humans. And that's why the industry is full of otaku!Collection: Real
I wanted to convey the message to children that this life is worth living.Collection: Children
Prizes do not mean anything to me. I think it is more important to make a child aware of the existence of a weird creature like a water spider that breathes through its backside.Collection: Children
[on the future of hand-drawn animation] I'm actually not that worried. I wouldn't give up on it completely. Once in a while there are strange, rich people who like to invest in odd things. You're going to have people in the corners of garages making cartoons to please themselves. And I'm more interested in those people than I am in big business.Collection: Giving Up
The villains are all parts of me. For years I've been wondering what it would be like if all those negative elements were forced onto the main character's side. I can understand a character with that kind of anger.Collection: Character
I find it pointless sitting in my house not working, though I like to go on extended vacations from time to time.Collection: Vacation
I'm not going to make movies that tell children, "You should despair and run away".Collection: Running
In fact, I am a pessimist. But when I'm making a film, I don't want to transfer my pessimism onto children. I keep it at bay. I don't believe that adults should impose their vision of the world on children, children are very much capable of forming their own visions. There's no need to force our own visions onto them.Collection: Children
The love of weaponry is often a manifestation of infantile traits in an adult.Collection: Adults
Cut off a wolf's head and it still has the power to bite.Collection: Cutting
You never know how a film will play, whether it will be successful or not, or whether it will touch the audience. I always said to myself that whatever happens, big audience or small, that I would not let the results have an impact on my way of working. But it would be a bit silly for me to change my methods when I have a big success. That means my methods work well.Collection: Silly
You always have to appeal to your audience. You always have to consider how well your project will do in terms of admissions. I abandoned many stories because of that. But I don't get too down about it. It's something I accepted from the time I decided to work in films.Collection: Stories
You always have to appeal to your audience. You always have to consider how well your project will do in terms of admissions. I abandoned many stories because of that. But I don't get too down about it. It's something I accepted from the time I decided to work in films. I could always do something else if I got sick of it, like draw manga, or make my own films. I found it pointless sitting in my house not working, though I'd like to go on extended vacations from time to time.Collection: Vacation
Personally I am very pessimistic. But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can't help but bless them for a good future. Because I can't tell that child, 'Oh, you shouldn't have come into this life.' And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making.Collection: Baby
There are so many ships in the animation sea that are computer driven, that I think we can have at least one that's just a log raft that we can row by hand.Collection: Thinking
If [hand-drawn animation] is a dying craft, we can't do anything about it. Civilization moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That's rare in any era.Collection: Jobs
But remember this, Japanese boy... airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.Collection: Beautiful
Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.Collection: Hero
Chihiro, huh? Her real name's Chihiro? Can't beat the power of love.Collection: Real
Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do.Collection: Thinking
At the time, sword and sorcery stories were quite popular. There were female warriors waving swords around as well, but the genre is populated entirely with people who have absolutely no responsibility to anyone, so I knew my story would have to be completely different from any of these.Collection: Responsibility
Those are shrines. Some people believe spirits live in them.Collection: Believe
I make films as a business, not as a cultural endeavor.Collection: Film
We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation.Collection: Hatred
You should despair and run away.Collection: Running
I think 2-D animation disappeared from Disney because they made so many uninteresting films. They became very conservative in the way they created them. It's too bad. I thought 2-D and 3-D could coexist happily.Collection: Thinking
I intend to work until the day I die. I retired from feature-length films but not from animation. Self-indulgent animation. It's nice that I have the mini-theater in the museum. Most of the museum visitors attend the mini-theater screenings and we've never had a complaint about the quality of the films. I'd like to continue to make films that leave the audience satisfied, but I also think it's pointless unless I offer them the kind of animation they can't get anywhere else. They're fun to do. They're short so it's less stressful.Collection: Fun
Airplanes are the most beautiful when they are in the air.Collection: Beautiful
The single difference between films for children and films for adults is that in films for children, there is always the option to start again, to create a new beginning. In films for adults, there are no ways to change things. What happened, happened.Collection: Children
When I start creating a villain, I start liking the villain and so the villain is not really evil.Collection: Creating
Since I am a person who starts work without clear knowledge of a storyline, every single scene is a pivotal scene.Collection: Scene
I don't have the story finished and ready when we start work on a film. I usually don't have the time. So the story develops when I start drawing storyboards. I never know where the story will go but I just keeping working on the film as it develops. It's a dangerous way to make an animation film and I would like it to be different, but unfortunately, that's the way I work and everyone else is kind of forced to subject themselves to it.Collection: Drawing
I myself become terrified of death when I am in a negative state of mind. But the thought of death ceases to bother me once I become productive.Collection: Mind
Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves.Collection: People
I try to dig deep into the well of my subconscious. At a certain moment in that process, the lid is opened and very different ideas and visions are liberated. With those I can start making a film. But maybe it's better that you don't open that lid completely, because if you release your subconscious it becomes really hard to live a social or family life.Collection: Different Ideas
When I say I get inspiration from my real life, I think of my real life as extending about 300 meters radius around me. So what I see in that area is what inspires me.Collection: Real
Maybe that's what these films are doing. They are my way of blessing the childCollection: Children
Rather than making that a good project, I like to make the kinds of films that children can understand in five minutes what the film is about.Collection: Children
There are all kinds of values within the films but I don't make message films.Collection: Messages
When you watch the subtitled version you are probably missing just as many things. There is a layer and a nuance you're not going to get. Film crosses so many borders these days. Of course it is going to be distorted.Collection: Missing
In our work, the question is, how much you absorb from others. So for me, creativity, is really like a relay race. As children we are handed a baton. Rather than passing it onto the next generation as is, first we need to digest it and make it our own.Collection: Children
Engineers turn dreams into reality.Collection: Dream
Well, yes. I believe that children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It's just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy.Collection: Children
See with eyes unclouded by hate.Collection: Hate