I guess I'm interested in the behind-the-surface feelings of the human condition, in my own way. I was always struck by the gap - at least in the books I was reading - between what people tell stories about and what I actually feel. I started thinking about a gap between fantasy and reality.

Storyboards are kind of inflexible, once you finish making them you have to stick to them. Since animation takes such a long time you become a slave to a storyboard that was created four years ago while as an artist and storyteller you change, you have new ideas.

In my opinion, animation is best when it communicates without words, because it is the perfect medium through which to make shortcuts to meaning. When actors are not talking, just acting out, it looks kind of weird. But in animation, mime is constant, and you accept it.

I would never jump under a subway car because that would delay all the people behind me. How inconsiderate!

Nobody wants to see the truth. Everybody wants to have the fantasy. When I look back at the books I was reading in my childhood were selling some sort of fantasy as well. Most stories are not going to tell the deep suffering of every day. No book prepared me for the suffering I would experience in life because the word "suffering" does not even describe what the suffering is. No story is going to tell you that, and no words can tell you that.

I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. I think I was six or seven when I learned how to read, and I still remember it.

I have decided that I want animation to be taken seriously; that is the goal of my life. I believe that animation is a very important medium to tell stories, not just for kids but for adults.