Quotes from Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Sometimes, you just have to go in there and bowl people over with your sheer force of will.

Every movie goes through that U-shape where you start with 'Oh that's a great idea. I love it.' Everything's possible and then you face 'Oh, we can't do that, and that's impossible, and that's a bad choice.' You go the practicality of it. And then you come up to 'Great.' But that middle part is when you don't have results yet.

Growing up, my sisters and I would always talk stories. One of my frustrations was I didn't know anything about cameras. I didn't know how to make a film and I obviously didn't have a special effects budget. I was a kid. So I was learning to draw to get down the stuff that was in my head, that I couldn't afford to actually do.

I've been drawing my whole life. My mom says my sister and I were drawing by age 1. Animation seems a real, natural extension of drawing as a way of telling a story visually.

My producer for the first 'Kung Fu Panda' movie, Melissa Cobb, is an amazing woman. She's supersmart and helps push everyone - male, female, anyone - to do their best.

I always want to do a big finale.

I've been watching things like 'Master of the Flying Guillotine' since I was 5.

I couldn't imagine screaming 'Action!' on an outdoor set over a wind machine or whatever.

I'm a hard-core geek.

There aren't a lot of female story artists, and it's baffling to me. There are a lot of kids in school that are female and I wonder, 'Where did they all go?' People have brought it up, asking me, 'What did you do?' I don't really know. I puttered along, did my thing and gender has really never been an issue.

I'm a very soft-spoken person. I don't throw furniture. I don't throw tantrums.

A lot of the time in animation is spent getting the story right - that's something you can't rush.

I've been drawing my whole life. My mom says my sister and I were drawing by age 1. Animation seems a real, natural extension of drawing as a way of telling a story visually.

The story in that particular spot was an ancient history story, and we wanted to give it a historical feeling, which was why we used a historical calligraphy scroll come to life.

I think in the experience of growing up and realizing who you are, what your place in the world is can be quite scary.

It's really helpful to have somebody to bounce off of and that will say, 'Yeah, that's a horrible idea. You shouldn't do it.'

The great thing about computer animation is that all of those environments exist as three-dimensional worlds, so these VR worlds already exist.

Tigress is my alternate personality, especially with children. I love animation because you get to do things you don't normally get to.

If you have a movie that doesn't strive to go to a certain emotional point, you can do anything and it will be fine and funny. But if you have something pretty emotional at its core, you have to make it right. You don't want it overwrought or unearned. Everything has to be moving towards this one thing.

I think the idea of a distant, far off dystopia, where the world is completely different from what we have now, is good, but it's been done. Especially in YA movies.

I'm not necessarily a huge fan of YA movies. I haven't watched a lot of them.

I'm not aggressive by nature and it was tough for me to make the transition to directing.

Going into live action, the perception I had was that to be a director, you had to be loud, you had be physically fit, wear cool hats, have a beard, and yell, 'Action!' really loud. And I'm none of those things.

I like to draw, and my drawings are what yell and scream for me.