Usually when I'm making a movie, what I have in mind first, for the visuals, is how we can stage the scenes to bring them more to life in the most interesting way, and then how we can make a world for the story that the audience hasn't quite been in before.

What happened to your hand? It got hit by a mirror. How'd that happen? I lost my temper at myself.

I didn't think so much of him at first. But now I get it: he's everything that I'm not.

A lot of people have said my movies are all the same. But I don't actually make an effort to have a style. I'm usually just thinking of what can we do to make it funnier or more interesting or just kind of refine it and it ends up like that.

If somebody asks me about the themes of something I'm working on, I never have any idea what the themes are. . . . Somebody tells me the themes later. I sort of try to avoid developing themes. I want to just keep it a little bit more abstract. But then, what ends up happening is, they say, 'Well, I see a lot here that you did before, and it's connected to this other movie you did,' and . . . that almost seems like something I don't quite choose. It chooses me.

There's no story if there isn't some conflict. The memorable things are usually not how pulled together everybody is. I think everybody feels lonely and trapped sometimes. I would think it's more or less the norm.

The animators bring their own spontaneity to it as well, because when they do a take of a shot it really is like just one continuous activity for them. They launch into it and do it, and they're not even quite sure how it's going to turn out when they're doing it. They're sort-of sculpting their way through a scene and trying to make this inanimate object alive.