140 Tim Burton Quotes on Movies, Life, and Dreams

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1. “Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child.”

2. “One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.”

3. “Half the fun is plan to plan.”

4. “Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else’s dreams?”

5. “Don’t worry about how you ‘should’ draw it. Just draw it the way you see it.”

6. “A lot of things you see as a child remain with you. You spend a lot of your life trying to recapture the experience.”

7. “Why would you want to go up there, when people are dying to get down here?”

8. “Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Not necessarily in that order.”

9. “You were able to get this beautiful, pure, visceral response to something without knowing too much about it.”

10. “If you’ve ever had that feeling of loneliness, of being an outsider, it never quite leaves you.” 

11. “Everything is based on something, in some way.”

12. “Maybe it’s just in America, but it seems that if you’re passionate about something, it freaks people out. You’re considered bizarre or eccentric. To me, it just means you know who you are.”

13. “When you don’t have many friends and you don’t have a social life, you’re kind of left looking at things, not doing things.” 

14. “Whatever troubles I’ve had, I’ve also gotten the opportunities to do things.”

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15. “We all know interspecies romance is weird.”

16. “Movies are like an expensive form of therapy for me.”

17. “I don’t have a dog because I travel too much. I don’t want to just leave it abandoned.”

18. “I am the shadow on the moon at night, filling your dreams to the brim with fright.”

19. “Good morning, starshine. The earth says hello.”

20. “Live people ignore the strange and unusual. I myself am strange and unusual.”

21. “It’s good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way.”

22. “I am not a dark person and I don’t consider myself dark.”

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23. “I’ve found that the people who play villains are the nicest people in the world, and people who play heroes are jerks.”

24. “For me, fantasy has always been a means of exploring reality. It explores the fact that your internal life, your dreams, and the weird images, and the things that come to you are things that are actually important tools for dealing with real issues.”

25. “I have a problem when people say something’s real or not real, or normal or abnormal. The meaning of those words for me is very personal and subjective.”

26. “I’ve always been misrepresented. You know, I could dress in a clown costume and laugh with the happy people but they’d still say I’m a dark personality.”

27. “One of the things I loved about the musical was that you listened to the soundtrack and it told you the story.”

28. “It’s very nice to have someone that you can have a completely abstract conversation with and leave the room, feel like everything’s fine, and then realize that if you pick it apart, you have absolutely no idea what either of you said.”

29. “If you’re culturally devoid of something—of weather, of artistry, of interesting architecture, all the way down the line to culture itself—you’re either forced to give in and get that car dealership, or you manufacture those things for yourself.”

30. “These people up on the screen going through torment and being on the outside, and somehow you relate to them, and it helps you get through life.”

31. “There’s a weird freedom in not having people treat you like you’re part of society or where you have to fulfill social relationships.”

32. “I’m a happy-go-lucky manic-depressive. It does get very deep and dark for me, and it gets scary at times when I feel I can’t pull out of it. But I don’t consider myself negative-negative. I’m positive-negative.”

33. “And while some people still look upon them as completely unrealistic, for me, they’re more real than most things that are perceived as real.”

34. “When people are deprived of a sense, their other senses get heightened.”

25. “One of the things that we were trying to do with this show was the complexities of relationships and love.”

36. “Can a heart break, once it’s stopped beating?”

37. “But then, on meeting you, I felt I should be with you always.”

38. “If you ever had a pet, with me it was a dog, with that sort of unconditional love that only dogs can give, people can’t do that; that sort of thing where it’s very powerful, it’s kind of your first love and your first real relationship, and usually your first experience with death.”

39. “There is both passion and longing and a bittersweet quality to it that is a part of life.”

40. “It’s great to know a girl who has so many eyes, but you really get wet when she breaks down and cries.”

41. “Stick boy liked match girl. He liked her a lot. He liked her figure, he thought she was hot. But could a flame ever burn for a match and a stick? It did quite literally. He burned up quick.”

42. “But she knows she has a curse on her—a curse she cannot win. For if someone gets too close to her, the pins stick farther in.”

43. “It’s hard to find logic in things sometimes. That’s why I can’t analyze things too much, because it often doesn’t make much sense.”

44. “I wouldn’t know a good script if it bit me in the face.”

45. “I always felt that Hollywood has a way of making you feel outside.”

46. “Some people get therapy, some people get to make movies.”

47. “It’s always an interesting challenge to see if you can create a character that’s got emotion.”

48. “It’s really nice to work with people who understand and really love the artistry of building sets—it’s great.”

49. “It’s people who you’ve seen that have given you a lot. It’s a real honor and pleasure to then meet these people.”

50. “That’s a major component of why you feel the way you do when you’re watching it.”

51. “I remember early in my career with Disney—which was a very strange time in the company—there were a couple of executives who were very supportive of me and kind of let me do my own thing.”

52. “I’ve often been accused of, ‘Oh, the movies looked good but there’s no story.’ But I disagree with that in theory.”

53. “I did some sports. It was a bit frustrating. I wasn’t the greatest sports person.”

54. “How is anybody going to feel for somebody with just eye sockets?”

55. “There’s something about seeing this little inanimate object coming to life that’s just very exciting. That’s why with ‘Nightmare,’ I held out for so long to do it.”

56. “I guess I feel so tortured most of the time. When I see someone else feeling tortured, I get a little perverse glee out of it.”

57. “For some of us, Halloween is everyday.”

58. “I was never interested in what everybody else was interested in. I was very interiorized. I always felt kind of sad.”

59. “There’s something quite exciting when you have a history with somebody and you see them do new and different things.”

60. “If someone comes up to you on the street and says something to you, and you know it’s meant something to them, and it’s connected to some project. That, I find, is amazing.”

61. “My parents suffered from that ideal of a perfect nuclear family. They found that a difficult pressure, I think.”

62. “I’ve always been blessed with being easily ignored or avoided. I think maybe it’s because people think I look a little crazy.”

63. “It’s great when you know somebody and they keep surprising you.”

64. “I always wonder why some people see things as weird and some people don’t.”

65. “It’s that journey of discovery, of getting oneself together, that fantasy and fairy tales are so good at.”

66. “Everything in this room is edible. Even I’m edible. But, that would be called cannibalism. It is looked down upon in most societies.”

67. “The only thing I miss is driving out in the desert in the Southwest.”

68. “Childbirth is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. I started crying, it was so emotional.”

69. “I’m not a big fan of spiders, rats, especially if they’re like—I got up one morning on a holiday recently, and there was a centipede in the bed that big. I wasn’t very happy about that.”

70. “I like the challenge of doing things you know that you maybe shouldn’t do.”

71. “I’m gonna go live in a cave, just completely live in my interior world.”

72. “I’ve always been more comfortable making my decisions from the subconscious level, or more emotionally, because I find it is more truthful to me. Intellectually, I don’t think like that because I get uncomfortable.”

73. “I never sort of really regret anything because you make your choices and I like to stand by them.”

74. “I try not to go back in retrospect and say, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have done this or shouldn’t have done that.’ You make your decisions and you live by them.”

75. “If you want people to leave you alone, then appearing to be crazy is a good thing.”

76. “Even if you’re doing something that the studio sends you, or something that’s based on a book or story, at the end of it all, you try to make whatever it is your own.”

77. “I find that the most special thing to me is if you’ve connected to people in some way.”

78. “I’ve always been confused and never had a clearcut understanding of the meaning of those kinds of words.”

79. “You can be happy, or successful, or whatever, but that thing still stays within you.”

80. “You don’t know whether chimps are going to kill you or kiss you. They’re very open on some levels and much more evil in a certain way.”

81. “I’m going to put that on my gravestone: ‘He created such a category of unwanted pop culture. Famous for directing unwanted cultural references.’”

82. “If I had a choice about going to a meeting at a studio or changing a nappy, I’d choose the nappy.”

83. “Anybody who knows me knows I would never read a comic book. And I certainly would never read anything written by Kevin Smith.”

84. “I never really got nightmares from movies. In fact, I recall my father saying when I was three years old that I would be scared, but I never was.”

85. “When I was growing up, Dr. Seuss was really my favorite. There was something about the lyrical nature and the simplicity of his work that really hit me.”

86. “I always liked strange characters.”

87. “Certain things leave you in your life and certain things stay with you.”

88. “The good thing about animation is that you can affect it. If something is not working, then you just fix it.”

89. “There’s something about taking a classic movie that people love and doing another version of that, you’re setting yourself up for a mistake.”

90. “When you’re making a movie, it’s a very interiorized world.”

91. “The great thing about visual horror films is there’s real potential for strong, beautiful imagery. It’s the one genre that really lends itself to creating strong images. And I’ve always loved that idea of windmills—your mind aimlessly spinning.”

92. “You know, those kinds of things in your life—movies—you try to work out your issues, then you realize those kinds of traumatic issues just stay with you forever and they just keep reoccurring, and no matter how hard I try to get them out of my head, they just sort of stay there.”

93. “Most people say about graveyards, ‘Oh, it’s just a bunch of dead people. It’s creepy.’ But for me, there’s an energy to it that is not creepy, or dark. It has a positive sense to it.”

94. “I love all forms of animation, but there is something unique and special to stop-motion. It’s more real and the set is lit like a set. But I think it’s also a kind of lonely and dark thing to want to do.”

95. “That’s why we’re all interested in movies. Those ones that make you feel, you still think about. Because it gave you such an emotional response, it’s actually part of your emotional make-up, in a way.”

96. “I don’t know what it was, maybe the movie theaters in my immediate surrounding neighborhood in Burbank, but I never saw what would be considered ‘A’ movies.”

97. “People thought ‘Nightmare’ was the first stop-motion animated monster musical, but that was.”

98. “Adults forget that kids are their own best censors.”

99. “And in that one gray hair I saw my whole life and I said, ‘I think I need an heir.’”

10. “I grew up watching monster movies and horror movies, which I felt were like fairy tales and I think this always spoke to me. Something about that is symbolism—the beauty and the magic which helps me work with film and start making modern fairy tales.”

101. “When I was a kid I always wanted to be a mad scientist. I don’t know, a regular scientist just was no one.”

102. “I started to do stop-motion when I was a kid.”

103. “People say I am stuck in childhood, but it’s not that. I remember seeing a Matisse retrospective, and you could see he started out one way, and then he tried something different, and then he seemed to spend his whole life trying to get back to the first thing.”

104. “I think I always responded to that more than this dark, unspoken cloud in the environment I grew up in.”

105. “It’s less about staying in childhood than keeping a certain spirit of seeing things in a different way.”

106. “When we were growing up and saw a Ray Harryhausen movie, we were interested in how it was done. But thank God we got to go through the magic of seeing it before we knew how it was done.”

107. “Things that I grew up with stay with me. You start a certain way, and then you spend your whole life trying to find a certain simplicity that you had.”

108. “Drawing is exercise for a restless imagination.”

109. “I never really consider myself as a great artist. I just always like to draw.”

110. “I don’t look at my films or my old drawings much, so that was an interesting way to kind of reconnect with myself a bit.”

111. “Drawing and everything you do there is something meaningful and personal.”

112. “Drawing is like a zen thing; it’s private, which in this day and age is harder to come by.”

113. “I feel any time you enter a dream world, it’s like you’re working out things, it’s all inside your mind, and you’re working it out.”

114. “There’s so much strange in real life that it often seems like a dream.”

115. “Son, are you happy? I don’t mean to pry, but do you dream of heaven? Have you ever wanted to die?”

116. “I can’t remember any dreams in my life.”

117. “I don’t really dream, I space out during the day—that’s one of my problems. Wander off when someone’s talking to me.”

118. “Kids are constantly saying things that are funny and surprising, and their observations are just ,you know, they’re like little artists themselves.”

119. “Whether you like it or not, a child really connects you to that time when everything’s new. It’s so important—not just for artistic endeavors, but for humanity.”

120. “You can learn a lot from children because they see things new every day.”

121. “I think a lot of kids feel alone and slightly isolated and in their own world.”

Tim Burton Quotes on Technology and Science

122. “Technology is technology, and then art form and people’s creativity is another thing.”

123. “Technology for technology’s sake doesn’t mean much to me anyway.”

124. “They’re relying too much on technology and not enough on the artists.”

125. “I used to have a phone machine that you turn on and off, which was great. Now, it’s so technological that it’s like going down the rabbit hole.”

126. “I always treated the science thing and the art thing as quite similar thematically.”

127. “They think drawn animation doesn’t work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies.”

128. “When it comes to art and science, people don’t like a lot of either. Instead of being open to it, they’re closed off about it.”

129. “Anything that helps an artist do anything—great!”

130. “If I’d said, ‘I’m going to be a director,’ it probably wouldn’t have happened.”

131. “First of all, you make a movie that you want to see and then you just hope for the best.”

132. “That’s the beauty of what you want to achieve as an artist—seeing things in a different way.”

133. “It’s like getting into film—I didn’t say early on, ‘I’m going to become a filmmaker.’ When you start to think those things, you’re in trouble.”

More Tim Burton Quotes That Talk About Actors and Film Characters

134. “ is a textbook actor who’s very intuitive. He is absolutely brilliant at going as far as you can go, always pushing to the edge, but still making it seem real.”

135. “I never saw Frankenstein, or King Kong, or the Creature from the Black Lagoon as bad guys. They were the good guys.”

136. “ is somebody I really love working with because he doesn’t care how he looks. He wants to become weird characters and I like that.”

137. “I think of Ray Harryhausen’s work. His films had an impact on me very early on, probably even more than Disney. I think that’s what made me interested in animation—his work.”

138. “Things like ‘mad as a hatter’ or ‘grinning like a Cheshire cat,’ are so powerful that music and songs incorporate the imagery.”

139. “It’s like people who play villains work out all their problems on screen, and then they’re just really wonderful people.”