Tim Burton fans know he is a fascinating writer and filmmaker. His movies are full of unconventional wisdom and unusual insight, often written in astounding lyrical dialogue. Here are 55 of his most amazing quotes – from him and from his quirky and incredible characters.
Tim Burton Quotes
These quotes teach us to embrace all of life, and all of ourselves. Here are our favorites.
“If I had a choice about going to a meeting at a studio or changing a nappy, I’d choose the nappy.”
“People told me I couldn’t kill Nicholson, so I cast him in two roles and killed him off twice.”
“One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.”
“Live people ignore the strange and unusual. I myself, am strange and unusual.”
“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.”
“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.”
“For some of us, Halloween is every day.”
“Movies are like an expensive form of therapy for me.”
“It’s good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way.”
“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.”
“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 with you.”
“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 being the school president, and not having people treat you like you’re part of society, or where you have to fulfill social relationships. You’re at a distance from the rest of society; you feel like you’re kind of looking out a window.”
“Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child.”
“Your mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But to tell you a secret. All the best people are.”
“It’s hard to find logic in things sometimes. That’s why I can’t analyze things too much, because it often doesn’t make much sense.”
“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.”
“I grew up watching monster movies and horror movies, which I felt were like fairy tales and I think this always spoke to me. Something about that is symbolism – the beauty and the magic which helps me work with film and start making modern fairy tales.”
“My diagnosis,” he said, “for better or worse, is that your son is the result of an old pharaoh’s curse.”
“A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him. And in that way, he becomes immortal.”
“I’ve always been more comfortable making my decisions from the subconscious level, or more emotionally, because I find it is more truthful to me; Intellectually, I don’t think like that because I get uncomfortable.”
“Drawing is exercise for a restless imagination.”
“Stick Boy liked Match Girl, he liked her a lot. He liked her cute figure, he thought she was hot.”
“We’ve all been called “Freaks” before. When I hear that word, I hear, “Somebody that I would probably like to meet and would get along with.”
“Unwisely, Santa offered a teddy bear to James, unaware he had been mauled by a grizzly earlier this year.”
“When I was a kid I always wanted to be a mad scientist. I don’t know… a regular scientist just was no one.”
“A lot of things you see as a child remain with you… you spend a lot of your life trying to recapture the experience.”
“Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Not necessarily in that order.”
“We all know interspecies romance is weird.”
“Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else’s dreams?”
“I always liked strange characters.”
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“Just because I cannot see it, doesn’t mean I can’t believe it!”
“Of course, I’ve been too close to see; the answer’s right in front of me!”
“I always appreciated movies and things that had everything, because that’s the way I feel about life. There’s nothing that’s just funny, just dramatic or just scary. It’s all mixed together. I’ve always felt, and still feel probably even more, that life is an incredible jumble of being funny and sad and dramatic and melodramatic and goofy and everything.”
“I find a sense of freedom in the suburbs. You assume the mask of suburbia for outward appearances, and yet no one knows what you really do… You’re never so close and distant from people at the same time. There’s something about suburbia, it’s really a place to hide. Or people use it as sort of a mask of normalcy.”
“When I was growing up, Dr. Seuss was really my favorite. There was something about the lyrical nature and the simplicity of his work that really hit me.”
“Good morning starshine the earth says hello.”
“For me, fantasy has always been a means of exploring reality: it explores the fact that your internal life, your dreams and the weird images and the things that come to you are things that are actually important tools for dealing with real issues.”
“It’s great when you know somebody and they keep surprising you.”
“I’m a happy-go-lucky manic-depressive. It does get very deep and dark for me, and it gets scary at times when I feel I can’t pull out of it. But I don’t consider myself negative-negative. I’m positive-negative.”
“I like the challenge of doing things you know that you maybe shouldn’t do.”
“I did some sports. It was a bit frustrating. I wasn’t the greatest sports person.”
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“I feel any time you enter a dream world it’s like you’re working out things, it’s all inside your mind and you’re working it out, be it Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or the kids in Narnia, they go through this weird journey that’s not real, and they’re going through this journey psychologically. It’s that journey of discovery, of getting onself together, that fantasy and fairy tales are so good at. And while some people still look upon them as completely unrealistic, for me they’re more real than most things that are perceived as real.”
“I’ve found that the people who play villains are the nicest people in the world and people who play heroes are jerks.”
“I don’t really dream, I space out during the day – that’s one of my problems wonder off when someone’s talking to me. I can’t remember any dreams in my life. There’s so much strange in real life that it often seems like a dream.”
“I think a lot of kids feel alone and slightly isolated and in their own world.”
“I am the shadow on the moon at night/ Filling your dreams to the brim with fright.”
“I was never interested in what everybody else was interested in. I was very interiorized. I always felt kind of sad.”
“Alone and rejected, Mummy Boy wept, then went to the cabinet where the snack food was kept.”
“Why would you want to go up there, when people are dying to get down here?”
“Everything in this room is edible. Even I’m edible. But, that would be called cannibalism. It is looked down upon in most societies.”
“Son, are you happy? I don’t mean to pry, but do you dream of Heaven? Have you ever wanted to die?”
“I am not a dark person and I don’t consider myself dark.”
“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.”
“I wouldn’t know a good script if it bit me in the face.”
And finally, from the amazing Edward Scissorhands: “People are afraid of me because I am different.”
Tim Burton: The Twisted Story Of The Eccentric Filmmaker
If you want to learn more about Tim, this is a fascinating and fun overview. Visually, Burton is one of the most recognizable directors in the world. Set designs, Gothic elements, and the way he plays with light and shadow can be seen in everything from Batman to the upcoming live-action adaptation of Disney’s Dumbo. But how did Tim Burton rise in the world of Hollywood? What journey has the director gone on to create such a unique style and visual sense of mind?! Get ready to dive into the filmography of the strange, weird, and often twisted world of Tim Burton. Relive his career, learn about his creation process, and see what sets him out from the rest in Hollywood.
Think about these Tim Burton Quotes this week
Artist, writer, filmmaker, designer of dreams – Tim Burton is uniquely inspirational to many fans. His words, and the words of his characters, take us places we never meant to go, but we are always glad we went.
These quotes help us see a bit of Burton in all of us, and the world. Take a moment and write down, or print out your favorite quote. And if you liked these quotes you will probably like these ones about Roald Dahl too!
I’m Alice Judy and AnQuotes is a fun hobby for me. We know that everyone loves a great quote and our mission here is simple – to be the best and most interesting quote site in the world! If you have quotes you would like us to cover, please contact us.
