Andrew Stanton Quotes

I'm not a craftsman of graphics or art or film. I'm more of an idea generator and manufacturer.

I don't have a drawer full of ideas. I kind of look around and take notes and wonder what could actually be a whole movie. And each time, I think I'm going to do it more commercial this time; I'm going to get a big budget and make it. But I always come up with some small idea.

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

I want to do nothing chic, I want to have ideas before beginning a piece.

The writing is really hard. You're alone. It really pulls it out of you. You pull it out of your head. But when you're a director, you're shopping - you're picking this actor, you're picking this scene. It's like the most intense kinetic high-speed shopping of all time. You sit in a chair and it will all come rushing at you like a wind tunnel.

If you have the ideas, and you're a creative person, then you don't really differentiate in how your ideas manifest themselves.

It's fun to try and picture what exactly is in your head and translate it onto the screen. How you can take something that lives in my mind and bring it to life - but that part is fun.

I enjoyed working with Vikram Kumar, as he is an amazing director who is full of ideas, and he tells me that he has different compartments in his brain in which he places different story ideas and works on them simultaneously.

One rule of invention: before you can invent it, you have to imagine it.

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 don't start writing a script until I can see it all in my head, then it's a matter of getting it down in white heat.

I often use hypothetical situations to generate information and imagery for paintings and to create a fictional space where a subject can be put into play.

I don't really know where my ideas come from. I start with a time and a place. That's what I need to get started, and an intellectual question.

There are really three parts to the creative process. First there is inspiration, then there is the execution, and finally there is the release.

I think very abstractly when I'm writing. Then, as the project moves on, it becomes more like sculpting.

With directing, you've got to find something and drag it up from its inception, and I'm at the early stages of doing that again. There's something all-consuming and addictive about that.

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.

The hardest thing is the idea. Ideas come from somewhere but as far as we know they come from nowhere.

I don't like this idea of Method. I come from that school, but what I was taught was that it's your imagination. You do your homework, and you use your imagination.

I'm like a magpie. I use lots of different things to build a character.

As a creative person, you want to start with a blank canvas.

Well, what I try to do is throw as much mud on the wall as I possibly can and just see what sticks, what shines as quirky or more interesting that the others, and I try to cling onto that one, somehow join a link from there to there.

I start with an idea that is no more than a paragraph long, and expand it slowly into an outline. But I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing.

For me, I get a part of an idea here and a little bit of an idea there, and then finally it accumulates into a movie.

That's the way I work: I try to imagine what I would like to see.