Michael Palin Quotes

The nice thing about animation is that you can realise your inventions without understanding all the hard theory.

Well, luckily with animation, fantasy is your friend.

What I love most about animation is, it's a team sport, and everything we do is about pure imagination.

If you're willing to put two thoughts into a picture then you're already ahead of the game.

Doing animation is great fun. It's like a different world.

Animation isn't the illusion of life; it is life

You make kingdoms and castles on your own.

You can be moved by an animated film and not by a live action film. There could be great inspiration in and humanity in that animated story.

Being a playwright is like the equivalent of doing a jigsaw puzzle that has 1,500 pieces, and it's a jigsaw of a blue sky. Not a cloud in sight.

Growing up, I didn't have a lot of toys, and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon.

Technology is a major tool in exploring and challenging your creativity, but it can also overtake your creativity... My mind goes very fast, and I can see all kinds of images that would be spectacular on the screen. But they would cost so much money, and would they really make the story that much better?

I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels.

I love thinking of cartoon characters feeling really real feelings. And I love to do that, not just as a fan, but as a creator, so if people want to look for those levels, they're actually there.

It's amazing what you can do without in terms of filmmaking when a story is really important.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Cartoonists' dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw.

You have to have conviction and completely question everything and anything you do. No matter how much you study, no matter how much you know, the side of your brain that has the smarts won't necessarily help you in making art.

I think if you want to do a thing properly you have to take a lot of care. I've always found it's easier to draw comics if you know clearly in your head what you're drawing, rather than if you try and make it up as you go along.

Doubt is the father of invention.

For me, part of the fascination with making animation is you go to a place; it's a complete immersion in someone else's fantasy.

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've always said that what cartoonists do is create friends for readers.

When you conceive the scene, you go, 'That is scary, right?' When you shoot it, a lot of times you're not quite sure. Hopefully what you can shoot is what your conception is.

That's what writing is: it's imagining that you can make a world. That's what basketball is, too: it's imagining the game as a world.

To be an animator you have to be able to tell stories but I'm not very verbal - I definitely do it through pictures.