People who are open about their own faults, especially, often want to ferret out "inner feelings" beneath the surface and expose any falsehood, and they think that it's in their inner feelings that the truth lies. But I don't think that's the truth.

The process of producing a project is one long string of delight and anxiety, but I think the real thrill of animation would have to be drawing the pictures.

We are on the verge of losing the traditional idea of the family, especially in Japan, where the declining birth rate shows no signs of stopping. This is precisely why I think we should consider with a sense of urgency what the new image of "family" should be like, and not fall into the nostalgism that days gone by were just better.

It struck me that when we read picture books to children, we parents, and people as a whole, do not appear in them very much, and that they are more constructed to be a world of children and animals.

Usually, people tend to see someone on the surface and think that that's who that person is.

People have two sides, and a person first becomes appealing when you discover both of those sides - and worlds work exactly the same way.

I was deliberately trying to express how possible it might be for unmarried men and adults not blessed with biological children to become "fathers of choice." In an old-fashioned, traditional world, this might not matter. But I think that it's probably going to become terribly relevant as time goes on.