Probably the hardest thing to do was the beginning of the movie ["300"], I think, when we were in Sparta and all that - just getting in the groove.

I always say, thank god I have this job or I don't know what I'd be doing. It'd be sad. I've always felt like I have been trying to brand a world for a quite a long time. You know what though, I feel no different. I feel like I'm doing the exact same thing I did in high school. Only I have more people helping me out now. And we have to take it all the way.

You can't teach anyone. You can't tell anyone. That's the thing you have to sit down and experience in order for it to mean anything. You can't intellectualize it. It's like why movies are cool. It's a combination of pictures and design and acting and music can create an experience that is outside of the experience that you can actually have in reality, which gets to my motion picture philosophy. People are like, 'aren't you trying to make the movies as real as you can?'

I heard one time that the Superman glyph is the second or third most recognizable symbol on Earth after the Christian cross.

I think that when you see the trailer [on movie "300"] - my feeling is anyway and maybe I'm not objective because I live it - but I think when you see it you immediately go, 'Okay, this is another sort of way of doing this.'

The problem is, when you're making an animated movie, the studio has an illusion in their minds - and it's really not true - that because it's a drawing, it can be changed at any time.

We've tried as hard as we can into keep the ideas intact in the hail storm that is Hollywood, so, whether he is or not, I'm personally proud of what I've been able to jam down their throats.