Quotes from Tim Burton

My parents suffered from that ideal of a perfect nuclear family. They found that a difficult pressure, I think.

When I went to Warner Bros., there was a woman named Bonnie Lee who was an executive who helped me to get to 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure.'

I remember early in my career with Disney, which was a very strange time in the company - there were a couple of executives who were very supportive of me and kind of let me do my own thing.

I'm not a big fan of spiders, rats, especially if they're like - I got up one morning on a holiday recently, and there was a centipede in the bed that big. I wasn't very happy about that.

The good thing about animation is that you can affect it. If something is not working, then you just fix it.

Drawing is exercise for a restless imagination.

Maybe it's just in America, but it seems that if you're passionate about something, it freaks people out. You're considered bizarre or eccentric. To me, it just means you know who you are.

I've often been accused of, 'Oh the movies looked good but there's no story,' but I disagree with that in theory, and '9' is a perfect example for me because the feel, the texture, and the look of that world, and those characters, is the story. That's a major component of why you feel the way you do when you're watching it.

Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child.

When people are deprived of a sense, their other senses get heightened. If you're culturally devoid of something - of weather, of artistry, of interesting architecture, all the way down the line to culture itself - you're either forced to give in and get that car dealership, or you manufacture those things for yourself.

I was never interested in what everybody else was interested in. I was very interiorized. I always felt kind of sad.

Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else's dreams?

It's good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way.

It was a weird reaction to 'Batman Returns,' because half the people thought it was lighter than the first one, and half the people thought it was darker. I think the studio just thought it was too weird - they wanted to go with something more child- or family-friendly. In other words, they didn't want me to do another one.

I am not a dark person and I don't consider myself dark.

You don't know whether chimps are going to kill you or kiss you. They're very open on some levels and much more evil in a certain way.

Whether you like it or not, a child really connects you to that time when everything's new. It's so important - not just for artistic endeavors, but for humanity.

There's something quite exciting when you have a history with somebody and you see them do new and different things.

It's hard to find logic in things sometimes. That's why I can't analyze things too much, because it often doesn't make much sense.

Jack Nicholson is a textbook actor who's very intuitive. He is absolutely brilliant at going as far as you can go, always pushing to the edge, but still making it seem real.

I don't know what it was, maybe the movie theaters in my immediate surrounding neighbourhood in Burbank, but I never saw what would be considered A movies.

I wouldn't know a good script if it bit me in the face.

Movies are like an expensive form of therapy for me.

I keep thinking I'm going to miss it back in Los Angeles. But I don't. The only thing I miss is driving out in the desert in the Southwest.