If you really want your films to say something that you hope is unique, then patience and stamina, thick skin and a kind of stupidity, a mule-like stupidity, is what you really need.

I was born in 1940 in Minnesota and grew up in the country... dirt roads, swamps, lakes, woods.

I've given up asking questions. l merely float on a tsunami of acceptance of anything life throws at me ... and marvel stupidly.

I just like the fact I can make a film which might give comfort to some people who think they are the only crazy person in the world and suddenly they see there are two crazy people in the world.

I was doing political cartoons and getting angry to the point where I felt I was going to have to start making and throwing bombs. I thought I was probably a better cartoonist than a bomb maker.

John Cleese was with a group called Cambridge Circus, who had come to New York, and we became friends. Years later that produced a certain team effort.

I don't think you ever learn just one thing. At some point you start unlearning things. I have been working hard to unlearn everything I know.

You get trapped by stories. Though I've got this reputation for being out of control, it's not true, it just happens to be a more interesting story than the truth.

I was an incredible Anglophile. I found people who shared the same sense of humor and attitude toward the world.

Literally overnight, I became an animator... and one that was well-known.

Because I dislike being quoted I lie almost constantly when talking about my work.

Even jellyfish have a life. So, what's your excuse?

Don't let people intimidate you into downgrading your goals. They intimidate only because they are intimidated by your goals.

Night sometimes lends such tragic assistance to catastrophe.

I look at you because I can't look away.

The only way through death is death itself.

I am not the most eloquent guy in the world.

Defer not charities till death; for certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal of another man's than of his own.

Ships are blowing up at sea, or catching fire, factories are blowing up. Are these accidents? Are these industrial sabotage? No one really suspected a spy network.

The greatest tragedy in life is the prayers that go unanswered simply because they go unasked.

With every word unspoken each moment comes undone.