There's a weird thing about me and characters with hair, from Ariel or Pocahontas to Tarzan with his dreadlocks and now Rapunzel... it's like I'm trying to make up for some loss in my life, I don't know what that is.

If you are offered the opportunity to do something that you don’t know how to do – say yes, dive in and do it anyway.

For me, drawing is the greatest joy. Animation is never as good as when I'm sitting at that desk drawing. Even when it's up on the screen, it's never as wonderful as those moments when it's drawn, to me.

Many years after animating Ariel, I continue to draw her, doodling as I talk on the phone, absent-mindedly passing time in a sketchbook. She has become a part of me and yet now belongs to the world and generations to come.

Believe in the character; animate with sincerity

There's a weird thing about me and characters with hair, from Ariel or Pocahontas to Tarzan with his dreadlocks and now Rapunzel... it's like I'm trying to make up for some loss in my life, I don't know what that is.

I used to think that animation was about moving stuff. In order to make it really great, you bounce it, squash it, stretch it, make the eyes go big. But, as time went on, I started loving animating a character who had a kind of burning passion in her heart. Suddenly, animation became for me not so much about moving stuff as it was about moving the audience.