I think the painted backgrounds in animations are absolutely stunningly beautiful. There's something really special about this medium. I don't believe audiences have grown past it. I think what audiences love is to be entertained-thoroughly, deeply entertained, and that's what I've always set out to do.

The spirit of Route 66 is in the details: every scratch on a fender, every curl of paint on a weathered billboard, every blade of grass growing up through a cracked street.

To take full advantage of computer animation, you have to pay as much attention to the believable as you do the unbelievable.

The spy genre is something I loved.It also extends to the bad guy because I think, to me, what I love the most about the spy genre is when you have a great bad guy. What makes a great bad guy, to me, is the logic. What he's about has to make sense to me, that if I was in his shoes, yeah, right, that makes sense.

Computers don't create computer animation any more than a pencil creates pencil animation. What creates computer animation is the artist.

You make a movie to entertain audiences. That's why you make a movie. The product sales is because people love the characters, and to me, that is a testament to how our movie has become so ingrained in family's homes all around the world and that's why I make movies.

I love the villains who are really hyper-smart. When at the end of the movie you find out what they were about, and it makes absolutely perfect sense from their point of view.