Andrew Stanton quotes:

Working at Pixar you learn the really honest, hard way of making a great movie, which is to surround yourself with people who are much smarter than you, much more talented than you, and incite constructive criticism; you'll get a much better movie out of it.

Being a sci-fi geek myself and going to movies all my life, I came to the conclusion that there were really two camps of how robots have been designed. It's either the tin man, which is a human with metal skin, or it's an R2D2.

We all fall into our habits, our routines, our ruts. They're used quite often, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid living, to avoid doing the messy part of having relationships with other people, of dealing with a person next to us. That's why we can all be in a room on our cell phones and not have to deal with one another.

Working at Pixar you learn the really honest, hard way of making a great movie, which is to surround yourself with people who are much smarter than you, much more talented than you, and incite constructive criticism; you'll get a much better movie out of it."

Being a sci-fi geek myself and going to movies all my life, I came to the conclusion that there were really two camps of how robots have been designed. It's either the tin man, which is a human with metal skin, or it's an R2D2."

The happiest moments of my childhood were when my toys broke, because then I could destroy them with impunity.

We're all going to keep telling love stories, we're all going to tell hero stories. It's all a question of what your own thumbprint, your own DNA, is, and what it brings to the table that makes it unique.

Loneliness is, I think, people's biggest fear, whether they are conscious of it or not.

Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty.

Great art inspires great art.

I've always been shocked and waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop that a girl would ever talk to me, let alone want to marry me. They always seem to hold the power to me, and from my mother to my wife to my daughter, every time I try to really figure them out, and think I've got them pegged, I pay for it.

I'm also a huge cinephile, and I have witnessed that to honor the book literally word-for-word never makes a good movie.

In fact, I don't think I'll ever make anything that will feel as divinely dropped in my lap as the opening of 'Wall-E.'

Even as a kid I was never the generator of humor, but I always knew who was funny, who to hang out with.

Story telling is joke telling.

Most people know me at Pixar as the guy that doesn't like to do sequels or very reluctant to do sequels.

A strong theme is always running through a well-told story,

If you're trying to do multiple agendas, you'll confuse yourself as a storyteller. If you have one purpose, everything else will fall into place.

I'm a family man, I have kids, and I go to the movies. And I'm just going to make the kind of movie I want to see.

I think in the future we might see things arrive the way Prince announces a concert where a few days before the show he announces it and tickets just go up. You might see that with movies and other things.

Well, executive producer can mean anything in the world of Hollywood, sadly. It can be a bought title in many instances.

I think you could go back to any filmmaker or musician or artist, and look at what their input was in their formative years, and you could trace all the lines.

I'm still craving approval from my parents. It took a lot of success for me to realize it was never coming. It's just not in their nature.

I've always felt you unearth story, like you're on an archeological dig.

The greatest story commandment is: Make me care.

The best stories infuse wonder,

I never think about the audience. If someone gives me a marketing report, I throw it away.

That's what great art does - it inspires other artists to do great art, and that's what it should do.

Use what you know. Draw from it. It doesnt always mean plot or fact. It means capturing a truth from your experiencing it, expressing values you personally feel deep down in your core.

Don't give [the audience] four; give them two plus two.

There's nothing that you like in this world that wasn't influenced by a bunch of key things; nothing came completely clean out of a vacuum.

The way Pixar has always worked is that we think of an idea and then we make it. We don't develop lots of ideas and then pick one.

I've been a fan of movies longer than anything else. One thing I learned a long time ago is that you can't translate a book literally to the screen. It won't work because it's a different medium. And it would be the same in reverse.

Change is fundamental in story. If things go static, stories die.

There's a lot of downsides to social media, but one of the nice things is that you can cut through all the BS and go straight to the person and ask them directly. I think that's a wonderful thing. I love talking to people who are true fans or who have a true love of cinema, and so if I can talk to them directly, great.

Sadly, my hobby is what I do for work, so I don't go off and go fishing. I go home and veg, and then I go back to work.

And I'm not anti-sequel, but I just feel like there are very few ideas that are meant to be continued.

I mean, frankly, I'm not speaking as a representative of Disney or Pixar, I'm speaking as just myself as a filmmaker: I don't go into anything that often thinking about a sequel.

I was that kind of kid that was going to the movies every weekend, I couldnt get enough of the movies, and now I get to make them. So I kind of have a one-track mind.

I had never touched a computer in my life before I came to Pixar.

Frankly, there isn't anyone you couldn't learn to love once you've heard their story.

A major threshold is passed when you mature enough to acknowledge what drives you, and to take the wheel and steer it.

In storytelling, the audience actually wants to work for their meal, they just don't want to know that they're doing it.

I almost feel like its an obligation to not further the status quo if you become somebody with influence and exposure. I dont want to paint the same painting again. I dont want to make the same sculpture again. Why shouldnt a big movie studio be able to make those small independent kinds of pictures? Why not change it up?

If you want someoneâ??s attention, whisper.

I'm twice as funny, I'm twice as smart, I'm twice as whatever when I'm around other people that challenge me.

John [Lasseter] always said that he was Andy, and Joe [Ranft] and I were Sid, and I think that's true.

The thing about working at Pixar is that everyone around you is smarter and funnier and cleverer than you and they all think the same about everyone else. Its a nice problem to have.

Art is messy, art is chaos - so you need a system.