219 Quotes by Tim Burton

A lot of things you see as a child remain with you... you spend a lot of your life trying to recapture the experience.

I think of Ray Harryhausen's work - I knew his name before I knew any actor or director's names. His films had an impact on me very early on, probably even more than Disney. I think that's what made me interested in animation: His work.

When we were growing up and saw a Ray Harryhausen movie, we were interested in how it was done. But thank God we got to go through the magic of seeing it before we knew how it was done. You were able to get this beautiful, pure, visceral response to something without knowing too much about it.

Live people ignore the strange and unusual. I myself, am strange and unusual.

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.

There's something about seeing this little inanimate object coming to life that's just very exciting. That's why with 'Nightmare' I held out for so long to do it.

I started to do stop-motion when I was a kid. You take a Super 8 and make some models, and move, click, move, click. All that. I love all forms of animation, but there is something unique and special to stop-motion: it's more real and the set is lit like a set. But I think it's also a kind of lonely and dark thing to want to do.

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 look at my films or my old drawings much, so that was an interesting way to kind of reconnect with myself a bit.