All Pixar Quotes & Sayings

I think Pixar has the opportunity to be the next Disney
not replace Disney
but be the next Disney. — Steve Jobs

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. — Andrew Stanton

I keep thinking about all the time away from my family this will cause, and the time away from the other family at Pixar," Jobs said. "But the only reason I want to do it is that the world will be a better place with Apple in it. — Walter Isaacson

At Pixar, Toy Story 2 taught us this lesson - that we must always be alert to shifting dynamics, because our future depends on it - once and for all. Begun as a direct-to-video sequel, the project proved not only that it was important to everyone that we weren't tolerating second-class films but also that everything we did - everything associated with our name - needed to be good. Thinking this way was not just about morale; it was a signal to everyone at Pixar that they were part owners of the company's greatest asset - its quality. — Ed Catmull

How can you say anything other than Ratatouille is Pixar's best movie? Your a chef, for Christ's sake," Sue said.
Lou smiled at Sue's accusatory tone. She needed this distraction.
Harley rolled his eyes and said, "You're letting your biases show, Sue. Up uses music better- like a character. The opening fifteen minutes is some of the best filmmaking- ever. And who doesn't love a good squirrel joke?"
"But Ratatouille brings it all back to food." Sue waved a carrot in the air to emphasize her point. "They made you want to eat food cooked by a rat! I'd eat the food; it looked magnificent. That rat cooked what he loved; what tasted good. Like I've been telling Lou, we should cook food from the heart, not just the cookbook. — Amy E. Reichert

At the casting sessions it was all boys and though I wasn't exactly bored I didn't need to be there, and songs constantly floating in the car keep commenting on everything neutral encased within the windshield's frame ( ... one time you were blowing young ruffians ... sung over the digital billboard on Sunset advertising the new Pixar movie) and the fear builds into a muted fury and then has no choice but to melt away into a simple and addictive sadness. — Bret Easton Ellis

By this point Jobs had poured close to $50 million of his own money into Pixar - more than half of what he had pocketed when he cashed out of Apple - and he was still losing money at NeXT. He was hard-nosed about it; he forced all Pixar employees to give up their options as part of his agreement to add another round of personal funding in 1991. But he was also a romantic in his love for what artistry and technology could do together. — Walter Isaacson

What made Notes Day work? To me, it boils down to three factors. First, there was a clear and focused goal. This wasn't a free-for-all but a wide-ranging discussion (organized around topics suggested not by Human Resources or by Pixar's executives, but by the company's employees) aimed at addressing a specific reality: the need to cut our costs by 10 percent. While — Ed Catmull

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. — John Lasseter

As I saw it, our mandate was to foster a culture that would seek to keep our sightlines clear, even as we accepted that we were often trying to engage with and fix what we could not see. My hope was to make this culture so vigorous that it would survive when Pixar's founding members were long gone, enabling the company to continue producing original films that made money, yes, but also contributed positively to the world. That sounds like a lofty goal, but it was there for all of us from the beginning. We were blessed with a remarkable group of employees who valued change, risk, and the unknown and who wanted to rethink how we create. How could we enable the talents of these people, keep them happy, and not let the inevitable complexities that come with any collaborative endeavor undo us along the way? That was the job I assigned myself - and the one that still animates me to this day. — Ed Catmull

Once we can do Pixar-quality graphics rendered in real time with interactivity, I could see games costing $200 million to make, and all of a sudden you have to sell a lot of games just to break even, so I'm a little worried someone's going to do that. — Warren Spector

At Pixar, I don't have to compromise at all. When I look at the finished "Toy Story 3," I don't sit and constantly think, oh, the actor was having a bad day, or oh, it rained and we couldn't use that set. The story that I wanted to tell is what is on screen, and I haven't had to compromise it one iota. — Lee Unkrich

I love all the Pixar movies, and I like 'Happy Feet Two.' 'Cause it has a lot of babies. — Quvenzhane Wallis

The way we work at Pixar is we write the script, but then we quickly move on into story reel, which is basically like a comic-book version of the film. And then we do our own dialogue and music and sound effects, all in an effort to be able to basically sit in the theater and watch the movie before we shoot it, essentially. — Pete Docter

We [film supervisors] always try to encourage discussion in the room because a lot of times newer animators who are just out of school or people come from other studios, they're gonna have different points of view and we want to make sure we're vetting all the ideas to get the best ones. A lot of people are shy about speaking up if this is their first time at Pixar or if they don't have a lot of experience, so we try to encourage that. — Victor Navone

The saddest day in Pixar history was when some guy said 'get Larry the Cable Guy on the phone. — Andy Kindler

Everyone at Junction Point has been inspired by the creative folks at Pixar and Disney Feature Animation to make 'entertainment for everyone.' — Warren Spector

Well, we try to - we definitely try to have a balance. And I think things have gotten a lot better at Pixar. When we did "Toy Story," that was an all hands on deck situation that really was time intensive. — Pete Docter

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. It's a nice problem to have. — Andrew Stanton

What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that, when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it. This, more than any elaborate party or turreted workstation, is why I love coming to work in the morning. It is what motivates me and gives me a definite sense of mission. — Ed Catmull

One of the head guys at Disney categorically said to me, 'We don't want to make children's films any more. We want to make films that are going to appeal to all quadrants.' Hence you have films like 'Shrek' and all the Pixar stuff, which is designed to suit everybody. — Gurinder Chadha

Now that had worked very successfully at Pixar, and he ended up adding one at Walt Disney Animation and one at DTS. So, I'm part of that Brain Trust where I sit in on all things creative for the whole studio, but especially in the Planes area. — Klay Hall

We work very hard in all of the Pixar films to not make anything in the imagery that causes people to think of something other than the story. — John Lasseter

Had the rights to make all the sequels and exploit the characters. I made a presentation that said, here's the 15% of Pixar that Disney does not already own. So that's — Walter Isaacson

I like doing everything. That's why I came to Pixar, as opposed to Disney or any other studio - it's small. At the time I started, I was, like, the 10th person in the animation group, and we all had to do everything. That's the way I like it, keeping it fresh. — Pete Docter

When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don't understand creativity. They don't appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability of an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feel for which five might be successful. And they think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they've not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are. On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology. They think they can just go out and hire a few tech folks. But that would be like Apple trying to hire people to produce music. We'd get second-rate A&R people, just like the music companies ended up with second-rate tech people. I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline. — Walter Isaacson