I'm still craving approval from my parents. It took a lot of success for me to realize it was never coming. It's just not in their nature.

Working at Pixar you learn the really honest, hard way of making a great movie, which is to surround yourself with people who are much smarter than you, much more talented than you, and incite constructive criticism; you'll get a much better movie out of it.

The way Pixar has always worked is that we think of an idea and then we make it. We don't develop lots of ideas and then pick one.

A major threshold is passed when you mature enough to acknowledge what drives you, and to take the wheel and steer it.

There's nothing that you like in this world that wasn't influenced by a bunch of key things; nothing came completely clean out of a vacuum.

I almost feel like its an obligation to not further the status quo if you become somebody with influence and exposure. I dont want to paint the same painting again. I dont want to make the same sculpture again. Why shouldnt a big movie studio be able to make those small independent kinds of pictures? Why not change it up?

Change is fundamental in story. If things go static, stories die.