Steve Erickson Quotes

I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse.

Between the theme parks and the movies, the Disney iconography was probably the first set of archetypes that I was exposed to. Walt was able to expose me as a child to the full array of emotions, including fear and sorrow. Those movies and attractions haunted my dreams and made a deep impression on me as a child.

I do what I do because of Walt Disney. Goofy. Mickey Mouse. I never forgot how their films entertained me.

Mr. Disney believed everyone was still a child deep inside.

I have always thought of Walt Disney as my second father.

I don't have a problem with green screen at all. I think children invented CGI. We invent worlds. A stick can become a sword. Or a bowl of stones can become a bowl of tomatoes. That's what children do, and that's what CGI enables us to do.

I think what I tend to do is look at all the very ordinary things that are around the house and imagine bringing them to life.

I definitely think my work comes from things that I liked as a kid, and things I still like now. Monsters and magic and museums and movies, a lot of things that start with 'M' for some reason.

Walt Disney was not a merchant of sadness.

When Walt Disney was making his films, he trusted his instincts and made films for himself, but they appealed to everybody, not just kids.

I look up to Walt Disney and what he has done.

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.

Fantasy is the only canvas large enough for me to paint on.

I see Walt Disney as kind of the epitome of a dreamer. He was a very forward thinker.

There is art and beauty and power in the primal images of fantasy.

I always thought, if I was gonna make a kids show, I would want to make something that my own 12-year-old self would love. So, I put all that in a blender and stewed it together to create 'Gravity Falls.'

Much like dystopian and post-apocalyptic books are a way to explore the worst-case scenarios lurking around the corner, fantasy can serve as a wonderful tool for showing kids that they have an inherent power in them to create change, both in themselves and in their community.

Disney is a delight, someone who ... sweeps those around him along on his dream.

I grew up watching classic animation, and I have always felt that the roots of animation is in fantasy and taking it in places that you can't go, any other way.

I wanted it to provide an escape route, I wanted to make pictures that were fantastic and took you into another world, one that was brighter. I started off with this idea.

Tell me", he wanted to say, "everything in the whole world" - for he had the wildest, most absurd, extravagant ideas about poets and poetry - but how to speak to a man who does not see you? who sees ogres, satyrs, perhaps the depth of the sea instead?

It's not magic that takes us to another world - it's storytelling.

He is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day's madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

All artists are entrepreneurs. All entrepreneurs are artists.

What seems real to the mind can be as important as any material fact. We live by the spirit and the imagination as well as by our senses. Cartoon animation can give fantasy the same reality as those things we can touch and see and hear.