Chuck Jones Quotes

Animation isn't the illusion of life; it is life

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.

Animation means to invoke life, not to imitate it.

Bugs is who we want to be. Daffy is who we are.

Disney was not a good animator, he didn't draw well at all, but he was always a great idea man, and a good writer.

An animator is an actor with a pencil.

A lion's work hours are only when he's hungry;

once he's satisfied, the predator and prey live peacefully together.

Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace.

If you have a single-minded need for something, let it be the unusual, the esoteric, the bizarre, the unexpected.

Anyone can negatively criticize - it is the cheapest of all comment because it requires not a modicum of the effort that suggestion requires.

Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace

The whole essence of good drawing - and of good thinking, perhaps - is to work a subject down to the simplest form possible and still have it believable for what it is meant to be.

Jackie Gleason said that comedy is the most exacting form of dramatic art, because it has an instant critic: laughter.

We must not confuse distortion with innovation; distortion is useless change, art is beneficial change.

There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is the willingness to think.

An idea has no worth at all without believable characters to implement it; a plot without characters is like a tennis court without players. Daffy Duck is to a Buck Rogers story what John McEnroe was to tennis. Personality. That is the key, the drum, the fife. Forget the plot.

As you become acquainted with a character you are creating, you add parts of yourself that are pertinent to that character.

In timing a film, we used to assume that sneaks move slowly. This was great for animators-thirty-six to forty-eight drawings for a single step-but it was sheer hell for the pace of the picture. So the rapid tiptoe was invented.

Well, directing is doing the key drawings, not the key animation, mind you.

Human beings will line up for miles to buy a bucket of catastrophes, but don't try selling sunshine and light - you'll go broke.

I have to think as Bugs Bunny, not of Bugs Bunny.

The older I get, the more individuality I find in animals and the less I find in humans.

When critics sit in judgment it is hard to tell where justice leaves off and vengeance begins.

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity

Comedy is a very, very, very stringent business.

Comedy is unusual people in real situations; farce is real people in unusual situations.

I'm still astonished that somebody would offer me a job and pay me to do what I wanted to do.

When a young artist asked me for advice on drawing the human foot, I told him, ‘The first thing you must learn is how to take your shoe off, and then how to take your sock off, then prop your leg up carefully on your other knee, take a piece of paper, and draw your foot.’

I'm not a believer in putting designers off in an ivory tower. They need to have a voice at the table so they can identify where and why design can make a difference. We also need to understand the business issues. If we don't make our numbers this quarter, we don't earn the right to do something cool the next time.

Humiliation and indifference, these are conditions every one of us finds unbearable — this is why the Coyote when falling is more concerned with the audience’s opinion of him than he is with the inevitable result of too much gravity.

[W]hen the coyote falls, he gets up and brushes himself off; it's preservation of dignity. He's humiliated, and it worries him when he ends up looking like an accordion. A coyote isn't much, but it's better than being an accordion.

You have a coyote inside you and you have to get it out

Anyone can say 'no'. It is the first word a child learns and often the first word he speaks. It is a cheap word because it requires no explanation, and many men and women have acquired a reputation for intelligence who know only this word and have used it in place of thought on every occasion.

I have come to know Bugs so well that I no longer have to think about what he is doing in any situation.

There's only one test of a great children's book, or a great children's film, and that is this: If it can be read or viewed with pleasure by adults, then it has the chance to be a great children's film, or a great children's book.

The only time a wife listens to her husband is when he's asleep.

A comedian is not a person who opens a funny door - he's the person who opens a door funny.

I have come to know Bugs so well that I no longer have to think about what he is doing in any situation. I let the part of me that is Bugs come to the surface, knowing, with regret, that I can never match his marvelous confidence.

You've got a million bad drawings in you; you better get started.

Censorship, I believe, is the most dangerous enemy to all human communication, and piety of intention is probably the most dangerous, the most virulent and the most self-satisfying.

The weatherman is not only blamed for his failure to foretell, he is blamed for the weather itself.

Mark Twain's Roughing It is a book that many people don't know about, but I highly recommend to anybody at any age.

If you make a fool of yourself in front of a cat, he will sneer at you, if you are sober; he will leave the room if you are drunk. If you make a fool of yourself in front a dog, he will make a fool of himself, too.

Painting does what we cannot do - it brings a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional plane.

Each character represented a trait that resides in me.

All worthwhile endeavors are 90% work and 10% love, and only the love should show.

The close-up, according to D.W. Griffith, allows subtle changes of facial expression-the raising of an eyebrow or the flicker of a smile-to become part of the action.

Fog and smog should not be confused and are easily separated by color. Fog is about the color of the insides of an old split wet summer cottage mattress; smog is the color and consistency of a wet potato chip soaked in a motorman’s glove.

You can't force inspiration. It's like trying to catch a butterfly with a hoop but no net. If you keep your mind open and receptive, though, one day a butterfly will land on your finger.

If you start with character, you probably will end up with good drawings.