Top 55 Quotes & Sayings by Andrew Stanton
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American director Andrew Stanton.
Last updated on April 19, 2025.
Working at Pixar you learn the really honest, hard way of making a great movie, which is to surround yourself with people who are much smarter than you, much more talented than you, and incite constructive criticism; you'll get a much better movie out of it.
There are so many times and places in history in our world that I just don't know anything about, and when I learn about them they're always fascinating.
I'm still craving approval from my parents. It took a lot of success for me to realize it was never coming. It's just not in their nature.
Most people know me at Pixar as the guy that doesn't like to do sequels or very reluctant to do sequels.
Well, I have no problem with 3-D but I don't think it's necessarily a blanket requirement for every film.
If you're trying to do multiple agendas, you'll confuse yourself as a storyteller. If you have one purpose, everything else will fall into place.
I've always been shocked and waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop that a girl would ever talk to me, let alone want to marry me. They always seem to hold the power to me, and from my mother to my wife to my daughter, every time I try to really figure them out, and think I've got them pegged, I pay for it.
The way Pixar has always worked is that we think of an idea and then we make it. We don't develop lots of ideas and then pick one.
We're all going to keep telling love stories, we're all going to tell hero stories. It's all a question of what your own thumbprint, your own DNA, is, and what it brings to the table that makes it unique.
Loneliness is, I think, people's biggest fear, whether they are conscious of it or not.
I've always felt you unearth story, like you're on an archeological dig.
Great art inspires great art.
I'm a family man, I have kids, and I go to the movies. And I'm just going to make the kind of movie I want to see.
Well, executive producer can mean anything in the world of Hollywood, sadly. It can be a bought title in many instances.
The happiest moments of my childhood were when my toys broke, because then I could destroy them with impunity.
We all fall into our habits, our routines, our ruts. They're used quite often, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid living, to avoid doing the messy part of having relationships with other people, of dealing with a person next to us. That's why we can all be in a room on our cell phones and not have to deal with one another.
Sadly, my hobby is what I do for work, so I don't go off and go fishing. I go home and veg, and then I go back to work.
I think in the future we might see things arrive the way Prince announces a concert where a few days before the show he announces it and tickets just go up. You might see that with movies and other things.
Art is messy, art is chaos - so you need a system.
I mean, frankly, I'm not speaking as a representative of Disney or Pixar, I'm speaking as just myself as a filmmaker: I don't go into anything that often thinking about a sequel.
I never think about the audience. If someone gives me a marketing report, I throw it away.
In fact, I don't think I'll ever make anything that will feel as divinely dropped in my lap as the opening of 'Wall-E.'
The thing about working at Pixar is that everyone around you is smarter and funnier and cleverer than you and they all think the same about everyone else. It's a nice problem to have.
I think you could go back to any filmmaker or musician or artist, and look at what their input was in their formative years, and you could trace all the lines.
I had never touched a computer in my life before I came to Pixar.
And I'm not anti-sequel, but I just feel like there are very few ideas that are meant to be continued.
Even as a kid I was never the generator of humor, but I always knew who was funny, who to hang out with.
I was that kind of kid that was going to the movies every weekend, I couldn't get enough of the movies, and now I get to make them. So I kind of have a one-track mind.
Being a sci-fi geek myself and going to movies all my life, I came to the conclusion that there were really two camps of how robots have been designed. It's either the tin man, which is a human with metal skin, or it's an R2D2.
I'm also a huge cinephile, and I have witnessed that to honor the book literally word-for-word never makes a good movie.
There's a mercurial nature, but more of a mysterious nature to women that I think is what makes them so attractive. And I think that that's what I love: Guys never seem to know when they've come too close and crossed the line, and then the temper comes.
The best stories infuse wonder.
Use what you know. Draw from it. It doesnt always mean plot or fact. It means capturing a truth from your experiencing it, expressing values you personally feel deep down in your core.
Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty.
I'm twice as funny, I'm twice as smart, I'm twice as whatever when I'm around other people that challenge me.
Don't give [the audience] four; give them two plus two.
If you don't think a film looks good then that is just a reflection of how bad the artist was that was using the paint that is really good.
In storytelling, the audience actually wants to work for their meal, they just don't want to know that they're doing it.
I was that kind of kid that was going to the movies every weekend, I couldnt get enough of the movies, and now I get to make them. So I kind of have a one-track mind.
There's a lot of downsides to social media, but one of the nice things is that you can cut through all the BS and go straight to the person and ask them directly. I think that's a wonderful thing. I love talking to people who are true fans or who have a true love of cinema, and so if I can talk to them directly, great.
John [Lasseter] always said that he was Andy, and Joe [Ranft] and I were Sid, and I think that's true.
There's nothing that you like in this world that wasn't influenced by a bunch of key things; nothing came completely clean out of a vacuum.
Change is fundamental in story. If things go static, stories die.
I almost feel like its an obligation to not further the status quo if you become somebody with influence and exposure. I dont want to paint the same painting again. I dont want to make the same sculpture again. Why shouldnt a big movie studio be able to make those small independent kinds of pictures? Why not change it up?
The thing about working at Pixar is that everyone around you is smarter and funnier and cleverer than you and they all think the same about everyone else. Its a nice problem to have.
That's what great art does - it inspires other artists to do great art, and that's what it should do.
There's always one sequence in every animated film that's the bane of every animator's existence.
No one's going to see my mistakes; I just need the safety of these mistakes to lead me to the right answers.
If you want someone’s attention, whisper.
I've been a fan of movies longer than anything else. One thing I learned a long time ago is that you can't translate a book literally to the screen. It won't work because it's a different medium. And it would be the same in reverse.
The greatest story commandment is: Make me care.
I almost feel like it's an obligation to not further the status quo if you become somebody with influence and exposure.
A strong theme is always running through a well-told story.
Frankly, there isn't anyone you couldn't learn to love once you've heard their story.
A major threshold is passed when you mature enough to acknowledge what drives you, and to take the wheel and steer it.
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