You had to grow up sometime. The fellows who grew early, they were in jeopardy. They became the cops and the crooks, and the crooks became the gangsters. The crooks became the Al Capones.

I've done things that I wouldn't ordinarily seem capable of doing. And I've proven myself in situations where there's life and death at stake. And so, I can live with myself knowing that it's not a matter of guts or anything like that. It's a matter of willingness to go the length, to transcend yourself.

My parents were immigrants. And the place for all immigrants was the factories. They were the source of cheap labor.

A character to me can't be contrived. I don't like to contrive characters. They have to have an element of truth.

Of course, mothers were very conventional, everything was very conventional. You had to have approval.

I feel that every professional is the art school for the next guy. I feel that maybe a lot of the dynamism in my own work, having been felt by the rest of the artists, they'll react to it and put elements of that in their own work, feeling that it'll help it.

I'd had a belly-full of being subservient. I had to find something else to do, and I did. I went to the animation houses. I went to new fields.