Happy Birthday Tim Burton!

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. I've always been confused and never had a clearcut understanding of the meaning of those kinds of words.

Wenn ich mich an einem Horror-Film versuchen sollte, würde ich ein realistisches Porträt meiner Heimat Burbank drehen - das wäre sehr schockierend.

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. It's less about staying in childhood than keeping a certain spirit of seeing things in a different way.

One person's crazyness is another person's reality.

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

Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else's dreams?

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

It's good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way.

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.

Movies are like an expensive form of therapy for me.

People told me I couldn't kill Nicholson, so I cast him in two roles and killed him off twice.

I always liked strange characters.

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.

Anybody who knows me knows I would never read a comic book.

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.

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

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.

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

I am not a dark person and I don't consider myself dark.

If I had a choice about going to a meeting at a studio or changing a nappy, I'd choose the nappy.

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.

In Hollywood, 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. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists.

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

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

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. I was much more terrified by my own family and real life, you know?

I wouldn't know a good script if it bit me in the face.