Top 80 Tim Burton Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

53. “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.”

— Tim Burton

54. “I think of Ray Harryhausen’s work – I knew his name before I knew any actor or director’s names. 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.”

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

56. “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. 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.”

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

59. “I had seen other stop-motion animated features, and they were either not engaging or they’re just too bizarre. There was one I liked when I was a kid called Mad Monster Party. People thought Nightmare was the first stop-motion animated monster musical, but that was.”

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

62. “They took a baseball bat and whacked open his head. Mummy Boy fell to the ground; he finally was dead. Inside of his head were no candy or prizes, just a few stray beetles of various sizes.”

— Tim Burton

63. “Minister: Welcome, brother! Do you reject Satan and all his works? Bunny Breckinridge: Sure.”

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

66. “The Boy with Nails in His Eyes put up his aluminum tree. It looked pretty strange because he couldn’t really see.”

— Tim Burton

67. “One of the things that we were trying to do with this show was the complexities of relationships and love. There is both passion and longing and a bittersweet quality to it that is a part of life.”

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

69. “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.”

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

73. “Jack Nicholson 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.”

— Tim Burton

74. “It’s like getting into film – I didn’t say early on, ‘I’m going to become a filmmaker,’ ‘I’m going to show my work at MoMA.’ When you start to think those things, you’re in trouble.”

— Tim Burton

75. “The problem with film is you never know when you’re going to be able to make a film so you can’t have people waiting around for you. Sometimes it’s fun to work with the same people and work with new people and mix it up.”

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

78. “I had never really done something that was more of a horror film, and its funny, because those are the kind of movies that I like probably more than any other genre. The script had images in it that I liked.”

— Tim Burton

79. “Disney and I were a bad mix. For a year I was probably more depressed than I have ever been in my life. I worked for a great animator, Glenn Kean. He was nice, he was good to me, he’s a really strong animator and he helped me. But he also kind of tortured me because I got all the cute fox scenes to draw, and I couldn’t draw all those four-legged Disney foxes. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even fake the Disney style. Mine looked like road kills.”

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

81. “Your mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But to tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

— Tim Burton

82. “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.”

— Tim Burton

83. “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.”

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

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

— Tim Burton

86. “My kid is a product of the fast computer lifestyle.”

— Tim Burton

87. “Nice work, bone daddy.”

— Tim Burton

88. “Did you ever to think, maybe your not too big? Maybe this town’s just to small? ” – Big Fish.”

— Tim Burton