Makoto Shinkai Quotes

"I think animation can tell more than live action."

"When we have a disaster in Japan, I wonder, how can we prevent our lives and traditions and history from the disaster?"

"In daily or everyday life, I am so impressed with tiny details, like when I look up at a street lamp falling on the street, it seems to have meaning or so much information in it."

"I think it is one of the common themes for many Japanese people to choose where to live: Tokyo or their hometown."

"Of course I'm happy when people mention his name and mine in the same breath. It's like a dream. But I know they are overpraising 'Your Name' because I am absolutely not at Miyazaki's level. Honestly, I really don't want Miyazaki to see it because he will see all its flaws."

"Miyazaki is a genius. He is the legend."

"People who draw tend to think they're craftsmen, so they really want to hang onto their pens and papers, but it's not terribly productive. To be honest with you, it's faster and easier to start with the computer."

"My life has had a lot of fun moments, but I tend to feel sadness more often."

"I don't think anybody can replace Mr. Miyazaki."

"When I was young as a teenager, that was the biggest mystery in the world to me: Why don't people connect?"

"I pay attention to the things that nobody else is looking at."

"You learn a lot more from stories about getting rejected than stories about becoming happy."

"I think that's a universal theme, you know: we don't know who we're going to meet tomorrow. And that person might change your life entirely. There's always that possibility, and while you're not necessarily actively seeking it, you have that desire deep down."

"I grew up in the countryside and wanted to go to Tokyo. I had Tokyo complex."

"I have never really sensed any of Miyazaki's artistic influence on Ando. If there is an influence, it's more in his attitude to his work."

"When Ando arrives in the studio, he picks up his pen even before he gets a cup of tea, and he stays seated until the very last train at night. He hardly eats, just nibbles at little balls of rice at his desk."

"I do receive some offers for live-action, but I'm not really that interested. It's not something you can just try out and give it a go."

"There are loads of novels that I really love, like Haruki Murakami's books, and when I read them, I do think about how they would work as an anime. But I do believe that those are great books because they work best as novels, or great manga work best in that form."

"I feel the best scripts are those that are originally written to be films: that is film in its purest sense."

"Ghibli is about craftsmanship. They draw characters and put life in it."

"The identity of Studio Ghibli movies are how the characters move. They move like live, real people."

"The first I paid to see with my own money was 'Laputa Castle In The Sky.' And I was like, wow! I really shocked by it. So I want to make movies that have a similar impact on the audience to that."

"I am from the countryside, very rural countryside, and I moved to Tokyo when I was 18 and have been living first-ever since. So yes, I am a city guy, but sometimes I sort of feel there's another me in a parallel world, still in the countryside."

"I was working in a gaming company, but I really wanted to make animation. I didn't really have anything special, no special tools at my disposal, so I used what I had on hand like Photoshop, and that's really how I started."

"I think it is really important to not only take advantage of these tools that you have at your disposal but also to really take the time to develop ideas within yourself and think about what you want to animate, and then you can use these tools to create what you want to create."

"I think love isn't doomed, of course, but in real life, love doesn't always work out."

"When we were doing 'Five Centimeters Per Second,' at that time, Japan was in an era when it felt nothing would ever change, so I wanted to make a movie that reflected that feeling."

"When I made 'Voices of a Distant Star,' I wanted to make money from making that movie, of course, but that wasn't my major reason."

"When I was growing up, I didn't have tons and tons of friends."

"When I was growing up and until I got married, I had some times when I felt a bit lonely and a little bit isolated - even after I got married."