I animated 20 years at Terry Toons. It's important to know that animators like pizza and a raise once in a while, and you've got to treat them with love.

I would like to have the original ending to my Lord of the Rings instead of the one they released. In my original cut I had the victory at Helm's Deep as the final sequence.

One of the best animated films I've seen come out of Disney was the Tarzan movie. I wasn't crazy about the story or the design on Tarzan's face, but the traditional animation was spectacular.

The rise of anime had to happen. If the Japanese could tell better American stories, it would go through the roof. They still tell stories which are very much oriental. I take my hat off to them.

Wizards was my homage to Tolkien in the American idiom. I had read Tolkien, understood Tolkien, and wanted to do a sort of fantasy for American kids, and that was Wizards.

What's most important in animation is the emotions and the ideas being portrayed. I'm a great believer of energy and emotion.

I had the X rating on my films. Now they do as much on The Simpsons as I got an X rating for Fritz the Cat.

Live action writers will give you a structure, but who the hell is talking about structure? Animation is closer to jazz than some kind of classical stage structure.

Animation is tremendously resilient. Animation will recover, as art always recovers. There's always cycles of good art.

As an artist, I want to interpret my feelings - not run across the street and ask what my mother thinks.

Cartooning at its best is a fine art. I'm a cartoonist who works in the medium of animation, which also allows me to paint my cartoons.

Film has to describe and show.

I am not interested in slickness for the sake of slickness.

I draw what I feel, which is no more than doing my job.

I miss animation very passionately. Not continuously, but every once in a while I would die to do another film.

I thought I had the rights to The Lord of the Rings. I don't know how Jackson ended up with the rights.

I'm having the same problems today that I had when I first started, saying that outrageous adult animation works.

I'm the first to admit that I can't be as good as Tolkien, and a movie can never be as good as Tolkien.

Look what Disney's done to their animation department. There wasn't an animator in charge of their animation unit!

Lord of the Rings made me realize that I'm not interested in doing anyone else's work.