My best advice came by examples. A supportive environment at home, school, and grad school. Support at the New York Institute of Technology, then George Lucas, Steve Jobs, and Bob Iger. The examples meant that I should support other people, even when things aren't going well. It will pay off.

It doesn't even matter how successful a movie like 'Up' is: you'll never sell a lot of toy walkers. But that's the way we spread out the risk.

The desire to avoid meltdowns actually is one of the things that screws up live-action films.

I've really thought a lot about why other companies fail or succeed. I had to be a student of failure and find out why things went off the rails. I did that at a fairly deep level, and it's still something I do.

Communication needs to be between anybody at any time, which means it needs to happen out of the structure and out of order.

I apply the term 'creativity' broadly... it's problem solving. We are all faced with problems, and we have to address them and think of something new, and that's where creativity comes in.

The Braintrust developed organically out of the rare working relationship among the five men who led and edited the production of 'Toy Story' - John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich, and Joe Ranft.

One of Pixar's key mechanisms is the Braintrust, which we rely on to push us toward excellence and to root out mediocrity. It is our primary delivery system for straight talk.

We need to remember we're always a lot more wrong than we think.

Creative ideas aren't like Jenga blocks, where they fall apart and you've got to start from scratch, though it can feel that way.

The need to challenge the status quo is just more obvious when you're failing than when you're succeeding. But it's no less urgent.

I can't look at 'WALL-E' or 'Finding Nemo' or 'Up' and look at in the same way as people outside of the company would look at it. Each one of them had angst.

When I see a film, I'll remember that there was a time when it wasn't working, and there was some pain and angst in order to get it to work.

At heart, we believe that the films that work well are the films that do touch people emotionally.

When companies are successful or not successful, they almost immediately jump to the wrong conclusions about how they got there or why they got there.

One term that's used in this industry a lot is this notion of 'feeding the beast.' You've got all of these people whose livelihoods are dependent on it. There are enormous pressures to keep material going into it, and the pressures to feed it are not irrational. They're the basis of your business.

If you're a director presenting a new idea, and the person who can judge whether or not it goes ahead is in the room, that makes you somewhat defensive.

As I look back on my career, I had a goal, which was to build the first feature computer-animated film.

Programmers are very creative people. And animators are problem solvers, just as programmers are.

Sometimes a leap of faith doesn't pan out.

I worked closely with Steve Jobs for twenty-six years. To this day, for all that has been written about him, I don't believe that any of it comes close to capturing the man I knew.

I liked the first 'Kung Fu Panda.'

I did like 'Despicable Me.' I thought it was quite good.

The Pixar name means more than any other name. It's very important to us to keep that name at a high level.