Quotes from Hayao Miyazaki

If you're going to retire, retire early.

Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions.

Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.

I do believe in the power of story. I believe that stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, that they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners.

I think we should stop using nuclear power plants because it's an old system that we can't control.

Reality is for people that lack imagination.

Virtual reality is a denial of reality. We need to be open to the powers of imagination, which brings something useful to reality. Virtual reality can imprison people.

To have a film where there's an evil figure and a good person fights against the evil figure and everything becomes a happy ending, that's one way to make a film. But then that means you have to draw, as an animator, the evil figure. And it's not very pleasant to draw evil figures.

I'm not a collector.

Cut off a wolf's head and it still has the power to bite.

Chihiro, huh? Her real name's Chihiro? Can't beat the power of love.

I like underwater life.

I do all my work by storyboard, so as I draw the storyboard, the world gets more and more complex, and as a result, my North, South, East, West directions kind of shift and go off base, but it seems like my staff as well as the audience, doesn't quite realize that this has happened. Don't tell them about it.

Life is a winking light in the darkness.

I wanted to convey the message to children that this life is worth living.

I'd like more of the world go back to being wild.

Sometimes I test myself saying, 'If I get a death sentence if I don't make this movie, would I still make this movie?'

I get inspiration from my everyday life.

Plants exist in the weather and light rays that surround them - waving in the wind, shimmering in the sunlight. I am always puzzling over how to draw such things.

Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over.

No matter how many weapons you have, no matter how great your technology might be, the world cannot live without love.

I don't like games. You're robbing the precious time of children to be children. They need to be in touch with the real world more.

Currently computer graphics are used a great deal, but it can be excessive.

My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.