I like to reveal people with some of the niceties of social behavior stripped away and the moral, ethical, and political issues are revealed.

Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity.

The phone that you carry around with you. It's not just that it's a locator for anybody who wants to actually find out where you are, but it's also a leash. It's a reminder just how tethered you are.

I think there is a very powerful wish that we all have of being self-contained and having sort of opted out or choosing to remove ourselves from society and to have no ties and no obligations, and even no possessions. To be free in a particular way.

I think every culture - you can call it an American Ronin, a medieval knight errant, you could talk about 'Shane.' There is an archetype that I think is actually common to a lot of cultures, and even the Clint Eastwood stuff was probably as influenced by the Japanese stuff, and yet done by an Italian.

The Mitch Rapp novels are as thrilling and entertaining as they are relevant. I am delighted to be given the opportunity to translate them to the screen.

Often, romantic comedies exist in a vacuum, and it's kind of odd.

There's a great tradition of actors taking on parts of much less obvious sympathy.

People tend not to dwell on drama.

The promise of an action movie to a certain audience is not a bad thing.

One resists categorization at one's peril.

Romantic comedy has come to mean a couple of moderately talented actors placed in implausible situations obliged to go through a set of paces that are all too familiar, the end result being neither romantic nor comedic.

A sex scene is gratuitous when it only exists for its own sake.

There's only a certain number of movies I'm going to get made, and it's important to me that they each be original somehow.

I really look forward to that opportunity to be a student and discover things. That keeps it interesting for me. And I sometimes get easily bored, and there are still some things I wanna talk about instead of repeating something.

People make the assumption that you're only interested in one thing based on the most recent thing you've done. But some directors can be pretty promiscuous about their tastes, and that's how I want to challenge myself.

Candor is the key to collaborating effectively. Lack of candor leads to dysfunctional environments.

A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Our decision-making is better when we draw on the collective knowledge and unvarnished opinions of the group.

Every Pixar movie has its own rules that viewers have to accept, understand, and enjoy understanding. The voices of the toys in the 'Toy Story' films, for example, are never audible to humans.

We have to evolve, we have to change, and in order to do that, we have to initiate the change.

The skill of a good creative leader is being comfortable with blowing up an idea and knowing it will get better.

When it comes to producing breakthroughs, both technological and artistic, Pixar's track record is unique. In the early 1990s, we were known as the leading technological pioneer in the field of computer animation.

Creativity has to start somewhere, and we are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback, and the iterative process - reworking, reworking, and reworking again until a flawed story finds its through line or a hollow character finds its soul.

Encourage people to mingle, meet, and communicate.

It is not the manager's job to prevent risks. It is the manager's job to make it safe to take them.

I don't think most of our films should be realistic, but you want that as an artistic possibility. Then, the artist can take the realism of the world and push it in ways that we can connect with.

We encourage our people to build their ideas from scratch, and we give them the resources - and, crucially, the candid feedback - that are required to transform the first wisps of a story into a truly compelling film.

Outsourcing, in and of itself, isn't responsible for the erosion of America's high tech infrastructure. The short-term thinking that led to a lot of bad outsourcing decisions is the root cause. And short-term thinking isn't a problem confined to the executive suite. It's a problem in Washington and in our society as a whole.

One reason for keeping Disney animation separate from Pixar was that by solving their own problems when they finished a film, Disney could say, 'Nobody bailed us out; we did it.' And it's a very important social thing for them to do that.

The trick is, in everything we do, there are things we love. And sometimes the things we love get us stuck. And it's only if we let go of some of those things that we free the movie up to become greater.

If you put out 20 films, you hope that a number are successful. It's like human reproduction versus frog reproduction. Frogs produce thousands and hope a few succeed. Humans don't produce many babies but put a lot of energy into them, which is kind of where we are. They still don't always succeed, but you try a lot harder.

Every one of our films, when we start off, they suck... our job is to take it from something that sucks to something that doesn't suck. That's the hard part.

In the early 1970s, I headed to graduate school at the University of Utah and joined the pioneering program in computer graphics because I realized that's where I could combine my interests in art and computer science.

I've certainly seen R&D groups, typically funded by large corporations, where they bring together a lot of smart people and nothing happens. And the reason nothing happens is that they don't have a clear goal.

It is only by trying new things that we can hope to create products that are original. Don't just say those words; act like you believe them.

We've always had ups and downs at Pixar, starting with the high we felt doing something we'd never done - 'Toy Story' - and the low we felt right after when we realized we'd messed a bunch of things up along the way.

In life,you're going to have risk, so you have to say, 'My attitude going forward is how to I fix the problem.' And it's not trying to cling onto the past. When I look around, most problems happen because people are trying to cling onto the past.

Believe me, you don't want to be at a company where there is more candor in the hallways than in the rooms where fundamental ideas or policy are being hashed out.

When I was in high school in the early 1960s, I wanted to be an animator and even took art classes. But by the time I was in college, I realized I couldn't draw well enough.

For me, one of the great tragedies is the conclusion studios have drawn about traditional animation. I believe that 2D animation could be just as vital as it ever was. I think the problem has been with the stories.

'Balance' is a soft word. It implies calm, something almost yogic, but that's not it at all. The process is always chaotic and turbulent.

If you think you're right 80% of the time, you're deluded.

Technical understanding should be a core competency of any company.

Throughout Pixar's history, we've had major meltdowns and crises. It's happened throughout our history: you reach a certain point, it doesn't work, and you start all over again.

I started off life at Pixar with interesting technical problems. But as time has moved on, I found that the social and management problem was far more complex and interesting.

Look at the computer industry. I've watched a lot of companies come and go, some that were right at the pinnacle of their success.

The problem is some of our riskier films just don't make as much money. But if you only make films that will just be commercially successful, then you can also sink yourself as a studio.

Believe me, sequels are just as hard to make as original films.

At Pixar, we believe strongly that filmmakers should develop ideas they are passionate about. This may sound like a no-brainer, but in fact in Hollywood, the big movie studios have whole departments devoted to acquiring and developing projects that will only later be paired with a director-for-hire.

We'll fund a project even if I'm skeptical because I'd rather be proven wrong by somebody on the inside than by somebody on the outside.