Tim Burton Quotes

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

Everything in this room is edible. Even I'm edible. But, that would be called canibalism. It is looked down upon in most societies.

We all know interspecies romance is weird.

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

Stick Boy liked Match Girl, He liked her a lot. He liked her cute 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.

Good morning starshine the earth says hello....

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 further in.

Mad Matter: "Have I gone mad?" Alice: "I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.

You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.

I am the shadow on the moon at night/Filling your dreams to the brim with fright.

Movies are like an expensive form of therapy for me.

Son, are you happy? I don't mean to pry, but do you dream of Heaven? Have you ever wanted to die?

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.

How long is forever? Sometimes just one second

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

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.

For some of us, Halloween is everyday.

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.

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

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

My name is Jimmy, but my friends just call me the hideous penguin boy.

Voodoo Girl Her skin is white cloth, and she's all sewn apart and she has many colored pins sticking out of her heart. She has many different zombies who are deeply in her trance. She even has a zombie who was originally from France. 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.

The Girl With Many Eyes One day in the park I had quite a surprise. I met a girl who had many eyes. She was really quite pretty (and also quite shocking!) and I noticed she had a mouth, so we ended up talking. We talked about flowers, and her poetry classes, and the problems she'd have if she ever wore glasses. It's great to know a girl who has so many eyes, but you really get wet when she breaks down and cries.

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.

Half the fun is plan to plan

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.

And I Jack, the Pumpkin King, have grown so tired of the same old thing...

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

If you've ever had that feeling of loneliness, of being an outsider, it never quite leaves you. You can be happy or successful or whatever, but that thing still stays within you.

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.

My diagnosis," he said "for better or worse, is that your son is the result of an old pharaoh's curse.

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 it not creepy, or dark. It has a positive sense to it.

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.

Can a heart break, once it's stopped beating?

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.

Stick Boy liked Match Girl, he liked her a lot. He liked her cute figure, he thought she was hot.

And in that one grey hair I saw my whole life and I said "I think I need a hair.

Staring Girl I once knew a girl who would just stand there and stare. At anyone or anything, she seemed not to care She'd stare at the ground, She'd stare at the sky. She'd stare at you for hours, and you'd never know why. But after winning the local staring contest, she finally gave her eyes a well-deserved rest.

Mr. Smith yelled at the doctor, What have you done to my boy? He's not flesh and blood, he's aluminum alloy!" The doctor said gently, What I'm going to say will sound pretty wild. But you're not the father of this strange looking child. You see, there still is some question about the child's gender, but we think that its father is a microwave blender.

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

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

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

Unwisely, Santa offered a teddy bear to James, unaware he had been mauled by a grizzly earlier this year.

Mayor: How horrible our Christmas will be! Jack Skellington: *No.* [the Mayor switches to his upset face] Jack Skellington: How *jolly*! Mayor: Oh. How *jolly* our Christmas will be

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

He can't fly around tall buildings, or outrun a speeding train, the only talent he seems to have is leaving a nasty stain!

My dearest friend, if you don’t mind, I’d like to join you by your side. Where we could gaze into the stars, and sit together, now and forever. For it is plain as anyone can see, we’re simply meant to be.

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

Stain Boy Of all the super heroes, the strangest one by far, doesn't have a special power, or drive a fancy car. next to Superman and batman, I guess he must seem tame. But to me he is quite special, and Stain Boy is his name. He can't fly around tall buildings, or outrun a speeding train, the only talent he seems to have is to leave a nasty stain. Sometimes I know it bothers him, that he can't run or swim or fly, and because of this one ability, his dry cleaning bill is sky-high.

If I touch a burning candle I can feel no pain If you cut me with a knife It's still the same And I know her heart is beating And I know that I am dead Yet the pain here that I feel Try and tell me it's not real And it seems I still have a tear to shed

Get away from meeeee!" Edgar -Frankiewinnie

Alone and rejected, Mummy Boy wept, then went to the cabinet where the snack food was kept.

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.

...But Christman? Not for the spooky.' 'Yeah?' Kristen giggled. 'Well, tell that to Tim Burton. He thinks Cristmas is all about the spooky'

Can the fool of a story also be the hero?

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

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.

Robot Boy Mr. an Mrs. Smith had a wonderful life. They were a normal, happy husband and wife. One day they got news that made Mr. Smith glad. Mrs. Smith would would be a mom which would make him the dad! But something was wrong with their bundle of joy. It wasn't human at all, it was a robot boy! He wasn't warm and cuddly and he didn't have skin. Instead there was a cold, thin layer of tin. There were wires and tubes sticking out of his head. He just lay there and stared, not living or dead. The only time he seemed alive at all was with a long extension cord plugged into the wall. Mr. Smith yelled at the doctor, "What have you done to my boy? He's not flesh and blood, he's aluminum alloy!" The doctor said gently, "What I'm going to say will sound pretty wild. But you're not the father of this strange looking child. You see, there still is some question about the child's gender, but we think that its father is a microwave blender." The Smith's lives were now filled with misery and strife. Mrs. Smith hated her husband, and he hated his wife. He never forgave her unholy alliance: a sexual encounter with a kitchen appliance. And Robot Boy grew to be a young man. Though he was often mistaken for a garbage can.

Because there is nothing quite so wasted as a life unlived. And I intend to live mine.

From that moment on, Batman Returns was destined to become what it ultimately turned out to be: un film de Tim Burton...with Batman in it.

I was born in Dream Town, but I am also the Pumpkin Queen. I will fight for Jack. I will fight to set things right.

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

An ordinary man can enjoy breakfasting on juice and rye bread. But when you are underfed, scorned, miserable or just plain bored, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little more colourful, exciting, tastier, meatier and juicier.

I told you she was the wrong Alice... You've lost your muchness.... Hatter!!!! Off With Their Head!!!

I am no longer your creation, I think, words knitted in my chest.

The final two issues of the Englehart/Rogers/Austin collaboration, Detective Comics #475 and #476, are now esteemed alongside the greatest Batman stories ever created and would provide the seed for Tim Burton’s 1989 feature film. In

I only want you to be happy.” He says it softly, so only I can hear, then he kisses my palm, soft and sweet.

Lenora was a different breed of chick entirely, Her wardrobe consisted of black shit only. She wore a lot of eyeliner and had a septum piercing. If you'd told me she'd lost her virginity in a satanic ritual on someone's grave, I wouldn't bet against it. Seemed legit. What worked for Lenny was the fact that she was small and pretty, so she looked cute more then scary – like something Tim Burton would keep as a pet.

The doorway smells of lavender, of freshly brewed chamomile tea, and my doll eyes flutter, suddenly heavy, like silver coins placed on the eyelids of the dead. I feel the soft, dreamy tug of a gentle wind. Easy and quiet. Like bedding down in a knoll of moss, or sinking into a cellar, without sound.

We were having dinner in a pub in the country, and I noticed a man kept staring at me. Outside, as I was leaving, he approached me quite innocently. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but you look exactly like you’ve been drawn by Tim Burton. Do you know who I mean?’ I replied that not only did I know whom he meant but that I had two children by him and, in fact, he was standing behind him. The man looked round and nearly died. HELENA BONHAM CARTER Actress & Partner to Tim

I wonder if someday Jack and I will have our own pram filled with tiny skeletons and rag dolls. The scuttle of little feet through the house. Skeleton boys tumbling down the spiral stairs; little rag doll girls with their threads coming loose, always needing their fingers and toes stitched back together. A perfectly grim little family.

At the crisp, inky hour of midnight, Jack and I are married atop Spiral Hill in the Death Door's Cemetery. Wind stirs the bone-dry leaves, and Jack takes my soft rag doll hands in his--the coolness of his fingers calming the flutter rippling across my stitched seams.

Nice work, bone daddy.

roses are red, violets are blue. a clown killed a boy, and ate him up too.

Zeldaborn

In Halloween Town, it’s said that if you’re ever lost, you should follow your own shadow…it will always take you where you need to go.

Vanità scriverà qui riposa il vecchio Jack.

I was a bride. My dreams were taken from me. But now - now I've stolen them from someone else. I love you, Victor, but you are not mine.

Jack pulls me back into his arms, as if he could absorb the pain and take it from me. And I know, I would do it all over again: I would leave Dream Town and never return a thousand times just to be here with Jack, to touch his face, to feel his ice-cold lips on mine, to have a life with him in this town. To stand beside him as Pumpkin Queen. This is the life I want. The one I'm willing to sacrifice everything for.

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.

I am Sally Skellington, the Pumpkin Queen." There is warmth in my chest now, heat and fury and anger. "But I was born in Dream Town." The words feel like their won conjuring, a spell, a ritual or bedtime riddle to cast things into the stars and make them true. I feel suddenly awake and alive, a woman who isn't simply a rag doll, but a ruler who has traveled to all the realms, even the human world, to set things right. Who feels a spark, a wrath growing inside her.

I forgot to mention that Paul in person looks just as outlandish as his house—a claim I lay with the utmost aesthetic respect. He has thick dreadlocks, a beaded wizard’s beard, and tattoos. He traveled in a purple velvet frock coat and a top hat with an ermine skull attached to the brim. No one knows his age. He was once described by a mutual friend of ours as “an eighteenth-century highwayman reimagined by Tim Burton.” Paul refers to himself as “a cross between Prince and Vlad the Impaler.

I think how heavenly it must be to nibble on tiny cakes and swirled caramels and plum ginger puffs all day. Tea with lemon petit fours in the afternoon; after-dinner mint truffles with butterscotch coffee in the evening. My mind swims with the notion of it. The easy, sugar-induced lull that would follow me into candy-tinted dreams each night. Life here, in Valentine's Town, would surely be simple and uncomplicated.

A bottle that reads, "Drink me." A tea party, with a dormouse, a March Hare, and of course, one Mad Hatter. A red queen, with as much a fondness for tarts as for saying, "Off with their heads!" When we think of Alice and her adventures in wonderland, we often think of these amazing (and amusing) elements. Although today, your vision of Alice in Wonderland probably includes Johnny Depp and a certain visual aesthetic by Tim Burton, it's difficult not to think of the Alice stories without thinking about the food that appears within the pages of the story.

I pass by cottages with candles glowing in windows, rocking chairs on front porches where people sit with large books on their laps drinking steaming cups of golden milk or tea that smells of chamomile and night jasmine. The entire place feels like a storybook, an old world frozen in time.

He kisses me again, folding me in his arms--the place I want to stay for a thousand years. When I first discovered Dream Town, I wasn't sure where I belonged, where my true home was. But now I know. Sometimes home is a town, a house with four walls. Other times, it's two hollow eyes in a skull, a skeleton without a heartbeat. It's here---not in Dream Town or Halloween Town---but in Jack's arms. Folded against this hollow, skeleton chest is where I belong. I let the tears stream down my face, I let them bind us together, salt and water and fabric and bone. Woven parts of ourselves that become one.

Mean girls come in all shapes and sizes. Some are blond cheerleaders, and some are Francophile brunettes who love Tim Burton and write song lyrics on their Converse. It was rarely the hellhounds who said anything mean to me; they expressed no real malice toward me other than the occasional eye roll. They were at the top and had nothing to gain by pushing me around. The ones who scared me, who still scare me, are the girls who see all other girls as competition, who see themselves as the persecuted ones, the ones whom the pretty and popular girls hate. When you believe you're persecuted, you will believe anything you do is justified.

I always had trouble with the Bruce Wayne in the comic book," Burton said. "I mean, if this guy is so handsome, so rich, and so strong, why the fuck is he putting on a Batsuit?

Did you ever to think, maybe your not too big? Maybe this town's just to small? " - Big Fish

It's a ghastly thing to lose an arm--or any part of yourself, really--to feel disconnected from your body. Not quite whole.

Even if my seams can be broken, that doesn't mean I will be.

Maybe, maybe, I can be both, too. A rag doll and a Pumpkin Queen. In control of her own life, her own royal title. A queen who doesn't allow the sovereignty to overshadow the rag doll she's always been.

Because right now I am simply a rag doll in a boat with a skeleton whom I love. Madly, Feverishly. Floating through a town where my title doesn't matter. Queen, queen, queen. Where no one knows who I am.

It feels like a fairy tale from one of those happily-ever-after books where the princess storms the castle, slays a goblin-dragon, and takes over the kingdom for herself. Except I am not golden-haired or fine-boned. I have no bones at all. I am a rag doll who married a skeleton king. A rag doll who woke from the impossible daydream and found herself in her own heroine story--a tale whose ending hasn't yet been written; but instead, is only just the beginning.

He wipes away the tear streaming down my cotton cheekbone to my chin and looks at me like his own chest is about to fracture. And for a moment, I'm certain they should just bury us both here, at the center of the graveyard. Married and died on the same day. Unable to contain the unspeakable, awful, wondrous emotion breaking against our eyelids. The dreadful residents of Halloween Town applaud, tossing tiny dwarf spiders at our feet as we leave the cemetery, and the warmth in my chest feels like bats clamoring for a way out of my rib cage. Trying to break me apart. I am now Sally Skellington. The Pumpkin Queen. And I'm certain I will never again be as happy as I am right now.

The guilt is a double-edged dagger, twisting inside me, breaking threads and tearing me apart. Can the fool of a story also be the hero? Doubtful. But I have loved Jack for too long to let him be fated to a life worse than death. A life spent in a nightmare he can't wake from. I would cross a thousand thresholds into a thousand different worlds for him.

There is an entire orchard. Hidden, tucked away. Rows and rows of magical, uncharted trees. Doorways into old, long forgotten towns. Father Time. Old Man Winter. The Tooth Fairy. Multitudes of worlds, places we never knew existed. I smile, and Jack pulls me to him. A queen, and her king. And I know, with a certainty that is knitted in my linen bones, we will spend a lifetime---Jack and I, side by side---slipping through doorways that lead to other doorways, carved into ancient, gnarled trees. Lands to explore, adventures to be had. But always together. Because there is nothing quite so wasted as a life unlived. And I intend to live mine. Fully. Unbound by the rules of others. Queen or not, we all deserve these things. Freedom. Hope. A chance to find out who we really are.

You're the only rag dolls I've seen in Dream Town," I comment, seeing myself reflected back in the features of their faces--something I've never known until now. The seams of Albert's mouth lift into a half smile. "There are a few others. Rag dolls like us, and also several Teddy Bears and Floppy-Eared Rabbits. They are all sleep-weavers, but they spend most of their time in the human world, helping lull children to sleep.

Growing up in Burbank, there wasn’t much of a museum culture. I never visited one until I was a teenager (unless you count the Hollywood Wax Museum). I occupied my time going to see monster movies, watching tv, drawing, and playing in the local cemetery. Later, when I did start frequenting museums, I was struck by home similar the vibe was to the cemetery. Not in a morbid way, but both have a quiet, introspective, yet electrifying atmosphere. Excitement, mystery, discovery, life, and death all in one place.

In St. Patrick Town, we find the stubborn, sprightly residents all awake--the leprechaun I spoke to days before still in search of his lost pot of gold in the glen, rain clouds heavy in the distance, and rainbows gleaming above the treetops. In Valentine's Town, Queen Ruby is bustling through the streets, making sure the chocolatiers are busy crafting their confections of black velvet truffles and cherry macaroons, trying to make up for lost time, while her cupids still flock through town, wild and restless. The rabbits have resumed painting their pastel eggs in Easter Town. The townsfolk in Fourth of July Town are testing new rainbow sparklers and fireworks that explode in the formation of a queen's crown, in honor of the Pumpkin Queen who saved them all from a life of dreamless sleep. In Thanksgiving Town, everyone is preparing for the feast in the coming season, and the elves in Christmas Town have resumed assembling presents and baking powdered-sugar gingerbread cookies. And in Halloween Town, we have just enough time to finish preparations for the holiday: cobwebs woven together, pumpkins carved, and black tar-wax candles lit.