John Lasseter Quotes

I really love being in a room and developing work.: being at the table, looking at the script for the first time, and putting a story on its feet.

One of the things that's fun about TV is it grows, and you set goals and aim towards stuff, and one of the writers has an idea, and you say, 'Ooh, that's so much cooler. Let's do that instead.' It's so much more fluid and organic that way, and that's the most fun part about it.

Writers get embarrassed sometimes in talking about how much fun writing can be, but drafting is often really enjoyable. Often, you're tumbling in the dark, and you don't know where the story is going to lead.

Good ideas are free - or at least they should be.

It's always great when a director is just supportive of what you're doing. They're not so much critiquing you but giving you more ideas, giving you tons of things to work with, making you question your character and making you think about it... and making it seem like everything is limitless. That usually helps a lot.

I think some people think that writers read and read and read, get the information, and then write. That's not how it works. Often, you write yourself into a dark place where you don't know what you need to know, so you go get the information.

At Pixar, of course, we have all these people, and they're just used to our process now where it's a discussion; it's a discovery. It's not individual artists going and fussing off by themselves in isolation and then handing their work in.

We encourage our people to build their ideas from scratch, and we give them the resources - and, crucially, the candid feedback - that are required to transform the first wisps of a story into a truly compelling film.

I'm always thinking about stories and ideas, and I have a few I'd like to actively pursue, but as much as I love them, I love the process of creation, and I want to go on and create things for myself, and create new things.

You just gotta record stuff and move on and make new material. Painters don't wait until they're in some specific gallery before they move on to the next painting.

Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.

I'm not one of those playwrights who says, 'Show up, hit your marks, and don't talk to me!' I always want to hear from the other artists involved, whether it's the director, the lighting tech, or the actors.

All kids, when they go to school, are pretty good artists and dancers and singers and poets. All that gets buried, basically through being educated, or brainwashed.

I've gotten involved in producing now, so the kinds of things that are more my own choice are more possible in that field because I don't have to be castable. I can actually get involved in getting stories off the ground that no one would ask me to be in because I'm the wrong age, the wrong sex, the wrong nationality, or whatever.

Schepisi is the sort of director who could, would, and frequently did phone me whenever he came across a textual problem.

I like a director who is very observant and is watching what I'm doing and noticing what I'm doing but is giving me time to figure it out. They don't jump right in and give you a note before you've had time to really search on your own with how to do a scene. I like a director that encourages me to be playful.

Sometimes I'm more inspired by stuff that tells a story and less inspired by stuff that's not a natural extension of what I'm already doing.

Think of the imagination as a giant stone from which we carve out new ideas. As we chip away, our new ideas become more polished and refined. But if you start by editing your imagination, you start with a tiny stone.

If I can find the right idea, I can get out of the way and do a good story.

Actors and directors work on things together. That's how I like to work, anyway. I don't want to be told what to do. I want to share it with someone and work it out together.

The best working experiences I've had are with directors who want to create with you while you're on set. I prefer a much freer environment. That's why I'm always trying to mess things up, just to know that I can!

I think the greatest privilege you have as an artist is time to nurture what you want to make; that's super luxurious. For you to rush into something, that doesn't feel fun to me. I'm living life in order to be able to write about it.

I suspect that writers and other creators are never really finished with any work.

When you're writing, in theory, everybody is serving you. When you're directing, you're serving everybody - in the guise of acting like everybody's serving you. But you're really serving the materials. You're serving the actors. You're in charge, but it's not free.

I can't just go into the studio with one idea and be all in on that, 100 percent. It takes me a while to arrive at something that feels like it's finished.