80 Quotes by Nick Park

I used to get in trouble at school for day-dreaming.

There is no worse situation to be in than Oscar night. Not knowing whether you've won is completely draining.

As I get on and films take four years to complete, I tend to have a hankering for very short projects so you can move on to the next idea. It's the ideas I'm interested in. What comes out of your head.

I love doing features, but it's a very different ballgame. Sometimes I yearn for short films again, working with a small team, getting my hands on the clay.

It's very hard to adapt something. You end up changing it too much to make a good movie out of it. I prefer to work with things that are custom made for my kind of animation.

Like my father, I would never as a child throw anything away, keeping old toys, electric motors and bits of broken machines under my bed in what I called my Box of Useful Things.

Mainstream animated movies are dumbed-down and sanitised: they make the world in their own image rather than exploring the limitless possibilities that are out there.

My dream was to draw for 'The Beano.' When I was 10 years old, I started drawing cartoon strips with 'The Beano' in mind. I lived in that world. You own a comic, it's yours and adults don't understand it. You could pile them up under the bed, and if you were off school ill, you'd go through them all.

Success brings with it pressure to conform. I always thought that success would lead to freedom, but the opposite is true: more people get involved, and committees make decisions, and it becomes a fight to stay free.