John Lasseter quotes:

A good part of my leadership skills is crafted from learning from experiences early in my career that were not positive experiences.

My brother liked sewing and sculpting and making things, and my sister sewed and painted and cooked and baked. She's a professional baker now and makes the most gorgeous sculpture-like cakes. She's the queen of wedding cakes in the Lake Tahoe area.

When I started work with LucasArts Computer Division back in 1984, I went to the Palace of Fine Arts and saw the Festival of Animation for the first time. I loved the diverse collection of animated films the festival held.

If you're sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that's entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it's the storytelling. That's why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story.

When I was a freshman in high school, I read a book about the making of Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty' called 'The Art of Animation.' It was this weird revelation for me, because I hadn't considered that people actually get paid to make cartoons.

Cars' was about Lightning McQueen learning to slow down and to enjoy life. The journey is the reward.

The Walt Disney Animation studio is the studio that Walt Disney started himself in 1923, and it's never stopped and never closed its doors and never stopped making animation, and it keeps going as kind of the heart and soul of the company.

Pixar's short films convinced Disney that if the company could produce memorable characters within five minutes, then the confidence was there in creating a feature film with those abilities in story and character development.

Today, among little girls especially, princesses and the romanticised ideal they represent - finding the man of your dreams - have a limited shelf life.

Fortunately for me, I'm married to an amazing woman - Nancy Lasseter - who is wise enough not to let me buy every car I want. If I was single, I would be living in a very small apartment and renting a warehouse full of cool cars.

I quickly realized that this medium had a lot to offer someone like me. To do Disney-quality hand-drawn cartoons, you have to be a master of two art forms. Seriously, you have to be able to draw like a Leonardo da Vinci or a Michelangelo. But also you have to know movement and timing and control that through 24 frames a second.

In computer animation, every detail has to be thought out, designed, modeled, shaded, placed and lit. The more you add, the more computer memory you need.

You can achieve all the things you want to do, but it's much better to do it with loved ones around you; family and friends, people that you care about that can help you on the way and can celebrate you, and you can enjoy the journey.

One of the big moments of my life was watching 'Star Wars' on its opening weekend in Hollywood. I was watching all these people enjoy this film, and I thought: animation can do this.

Computers don't create computer animation any more than a pencil creates pencil animation. What creates computer animation is the artist.

Sure, they were simple desk lamps with only a minimal amount of movement, but you could immediately tell that Luxo Jr. was a baby, and that the big one was his mother. In that short little film, computer animation went from a novelty to a serious tool for filmmaking.

I love 3-D. I have been a big fan of 3-D for a long, long time. I took my 1988 wedding pictures in 3-D!

I worry about kids today not having time to build a tree house or ride a bike or go fishing. I worry that life is getting faster and faster.

I was mentored by great Disney animators at the end of their careers.

I believe in research. Each movie at Pixar involves research with college professors or taking trips to learn as much as we can about a particular subject matter.

There is such amazing talent at Disney. My job is 100% creative, and I am very excited to creatively lead them.

I love the work of Hayao Miyazaki. 'My Neighbor Totoro' and 'Castle in the Sky' are two of the great films that he's made that I just love.

Pixar has invented much of computer animation as it's known today, and I've been very lucky to be the first traditional animator to work with computer animation.

I've always been thinking in three dimensions, ever since I started working with computer animation in the early '80s.

I always laugh at these companies that have these rules saying, 'You're only allowed to have this or that on your desk.' It's no fun to work at a place like that.

I never quite understood why Disney hadn't made a sincere fairy tale since 'Beauty and the Beast.'

Cars 2' is about a character learning to be himself. There's times in our lives where people always say, 'Well, you've gotta act differently. You should always be yourself.' That's the emotional core of the story.

Finding Nemo' was originally shot in 3D.

I love French auto design of the early '50s, '60s, early '70s of Citorens, Renaults, and Peugeots. They're so unique.

The greatest bad guys, you understand where they're coming from. They believe they're doing the right thing. Sometimes it's for greed, sometimes it's for other reasons, but they are what they call the center of good. They always believe they're doing the right thing.

Winnie the Pooh and his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood are among the most entertaining and beloved characters ever animated by Disney.

The interstate highway system was built to get people from point A to point B as fast as possible. And they knocked down mountains and filled valleys and made everything nice and big and flat, and they bypassed every town.

Car love is the sound of a throaty V-8 rumbling and revving, the acceleration throwing you back in the seat - especially when you get on a beautiful, winding road and the light's dappling through the trees.

To me, I would much rather be part of a healthy industry than being the only player in a dead industry.

I've noticed with my own kids, it seems like they have so much more homework than I did.

Take any movie with an actor you like. Turn your head and just listen to the performance. In some cases, the physical presence remains as strong when you can't see the actor, when it's just the voice.

Everything I do and everything Pixar does is based on a simple rule: Quality is the best business plan, period.

Every technology that comes into filmmaking is first a gimmick. Think about sound with 'The Jazz Singer' or the first colour or surround sound - it takes a while for filmmakers to understand how to use it.

When I look at the success I have, it's because of my creative-thinking skills.

You never hear of a live-action studio that has been making so-so films looking over at a studio that's making great movies and going, 'Oh, we see the difference - we're using a different camera.'

I'm a car nut. My father was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership.

People who get into animation tend to be kids. We don't have to grow up. But also, animators are great observers, and there's this childlike wonder and interest in the world, the observation of little things that happen in life.

With science, there is this culture of experimentation, and most of the time, those experiments fail.

Growing up, my favorite TV show was 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.', hands down.

It's the nature of Hollywood that there are the people in power and the people who tell them what they want them to hear.

Every single Pixar film, at one time or another, has been the worst movie ever put on film. But we know. We trust our process. We don't get scared and say, 'Oh, no, this film isn't working.'

The iPad changed my life!

You know, going to the movies has always been recession-proof. It's fairly cheap entertainment; it's classic escapism.

I love Japan. I love the collision of the modern and ancient worlds coming together in that place. It's so high-tech and cool.

In dire economic times, movies are relatively inexpensive entertainment for the whole family.

My mother was a high school arts teacher, so I was always surrounded by the arts.

At Pixar, we've been huge fans of any new technology that makes the viewer experience of our movies better. Blu-ray is the best yet because the picture quality, especially for our movies, is unbelievable.

The hardest thing to get is true emotion. I always believe you need to earn that with the audience. You can't just tell them, 'Ok, be sad now.'

I laugh very hard at work every day.

At Pixar, after every movie we have postmortum meetings where we discuss what worked and what didn't work.

What I love about Goofy is the flesh on his cheeks. You can almost feel it.

Every movie has three things you have to do - you have to have a compelling story that keeps people on the edge of their seats; you have to populate that story with memorable and appealing characters; and you have to put that story and those characters in a believable world. Those three things are so vitally important.

If you've seen 'Spirited Away', 'Spirited Away' is set in a very, very Japanese sensibility. And so, to Japanese audiences, when Sen would walk up, the main character, and look at this big building with a flag on it with Japanese writing on it, everyone in Japan would know what that is.

My father pulled into Pearl Harbor four days after the bombing, and he said, everything was still burning. He said they never told the public how bad it was. It was really bad.

I believe in research you cannot do enough research; believability comes out of what's real.

I love movies that make me cry, because they're tapping into a real emotion in me, and I always think afterwards: how did they do that?

I'm really proud of 'Cars.' 'Cars,' when it first came out, got probably the most mediocre reviews of a Pixar film.

When you can have a character that the audience likes from the beginning, but then you put them in a situation where they grow - I think that gives it a lot of heart.

Pixar has been compared to fine furniture makers who polish the backs of drawers - even if you don't see everything in a particular scene, you still feel that every little detail has been met.

Of all bugs, growing up I just loved the pill bugs. They roll up, you play with them, you wait for them to open up, and then when you touch them they roll up again. I just love that.

I loved animation and cartoons, even when it was not cool when you were in high school. I raced home to see the Bugs Bunny cartoons.

I am, by nature, an honest person. I wear my emotions on my sleeve. There is no 'behind closed doors' with me.

Short films really helped me develop as a story teller, animator, and as a director.

Animation is the only thing I ever wanted to do in my whole life. I have no desire for live-action or anything else.

Animation is the one type of movie that really does play for the entire audience. Our challenge is to make stories that connect for kids and adults.

Every animator is really an actor performing in slow motion, living the character a drawing at a time.

My mother was a high school arts teacher, so I was always surrounded by the arts

Quality is the best business plan.

I have this saying. Quality is the best business plan. I believe so strongly in that.

To me, I would much rather be part of a healthy industry than being the only player in a dead industry. There are so many great artists out there. And the goal is to make great movies, you know? So to be successful, quality is the best business plan as I always say.

I believe in the nobility of entertaining people and I take great, great pride that people are willing to give me two or three hours of their busy lives.

When I look at the success I have, it's because of my creative thinking skills.

Directing is one of my favourite things to do because I love telling stories and I love working with the individual artists and it's something that I really missed.

The spirit of Route 66 is in the details: every scratch on a fender, every curl of paint on a weathered billboard, every blade of grass growing up through a cracked street.

You cannot base a whole movie on just the imagery alone. It has to be the story and the characters.

What's fun about the story development at Pixar is it's a journey. You don't just write a script and then that's the movie you make. It's just constant evolution and being open to that and that collaboration with the voice actors and with the artists and animators at Pixar.

Pixar films are not realistic. They are believable for the worlds we are creating.

Walt Disney always said, 'For every laugh, there should be a tear.' I believe in that.

I've got Disney blood running through my veins.

Walt Disney had always tried to get more dimension in his animation and when I saw these tapes, I thought, This is it! This is what Walt was waiting for! But when I looked around, nobody at the studio at the time was even halfway interested in it.

I love the Sonoma wine community. It's like Pixar - nothing competitive, only supportive. They're always rooting for you.

Soon I learned that the worse the puns and jokes, the funnier they could be, if you knew how to deliver them.

I do what I do because of Walt Disney - his films and his theme park and his characters and his joy in entertaining.

I am so proud that 'Up' is Pixar's 10th film. I think it's the funniest film that we've ever made and also one of the most beautiful.

At Pixar, good ideas may be cut from a film, but they are never forgotten.

Steve Jobs is like a brother to me and he's one of the founders of Pixar, and when the first iPad came out, I got one right away.

At Pixar, we do sequels only when we come up with a great idea, and we always strive to be different than the original.

Every Pixar film, when we start developing the story, it takes about four years to make one of our films.

Cars' is a really personal story for me because, first of all, I grew up in Los Angeles - the car crazy capital.

Every young person gets so excited about new software packages and new technology.

In overseeing both Disney and Pixar Animation, each studio has a unique culture.

I'm a big fan of pantomime storytelling, being an animator.

We use shorts at the studio extensively to develop talent. I always love to give opportunities for young story people, animators, layout people something like that to take the next step up in their career and try things out.

When Walt Disney was making his films, he trusted his instincts and made films for himself, but they appealed to everybody, not just kids.

Bambi' is an amazing film, and when you watch it today, it's just as beautiful. It's timeless. It's just as beautiful today as it was back then.

Look at the films of Walt Disney: 'Snow White' came out in February 1938, and I can't think of another film from that year that's watched as much. The same is true of 'Bambi,' 'Dumbo'... even, frankly, 'Toy Story,' which is probably watched more than any other movie of 1995.

I've often heard people say that managing creative people is the hardest thing in the world. 'They're never happy, they drive up the cost of things, blah blah blah.' I just manage people the way I always wanted to be managed. That is, to be creatively challenged, but never to be told what to do.

Bolt' was made by Walt Disney Animation Studios, not by Pixar.

There was a period of time when they estimated the two biggest stars in Hollywood were Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse.

I love bringing the inanimate object to life.

The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.

'Cars' was about Lightning McQueen learning to slow down and to enjoy life. The journey is the reward.

The magic of Disneyland, walking through the tunnel underneath the train station to Main Street, it just transports you to other places and other times.

I do what I do because of Walt Disney. Goofy. Mickey Mouse. I never forgot how their films entertained me.

Every Pixar movie at one time was the worst motion picture ever made.

At Pixar, 'Wall-E' was our ninth film, and they've all been successes - more than that, they've all really touched people. Everybody wonders, 'How do you do it?' Well, how do you not do it? You just work hard.

I'm a big Disneyland nut.

I realized that people make cartoons for a living. It had never dawned on me that you could do this as a career.

The way the films look will never entertain an audience alone. It has to be in the service of a good story with great characters.

When you really study espionage movies, or spy movies, the beginnings are really set up to have, like, an amazing bit of action, but at the moment you're watching it, you have no idea why or what it's about.

Nobody pays attention to the way a person's shirt folds around his shoulder when they sit down, but if that shirt folded in an unusual way, you'd notice it.

I love working for a company full of geeks.

Rotten Tomatoes is such a great website, in that it has one foot in the Internet world and one foot in the cinema world, and it keeps its grounding between them just perfectly.

The specific influences on villains to me is, I love the villains who are really hyper-smart. When at the end of the movie you find out what they were about, and it makes absolutely perfect sense from their point of view.

It [moviemaking] is about entertaining audiences with great characters and great stories, you want to make people laugh, you want to make people cry, you want to have great music that is memorable. You want a movie that, as soon as it's over, you want to watch it again, just like that. That's what it is, whether it's live-action, animation, hand drawn, computer, special effects, puppet animation, it doesn't matter. That's the goal of a filmmaker.