Chuck Jones

A lion's work hours are only when he's hungry; once he's sasfied, the predator and prey live
peacefully together.

Animaon is going very well right now. And to a great extent because these young people at
Disney that are doing the films.

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creavity.

Anyone can negavely cricize ‐ it is the cheapest of all comment because it requires not a
modicum of the effort that suggeson requires.

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

But the voice lives on. As long as Daffy Duck is alive, Leon Schlesinger is there, in his corner of
heaven.

Censorship, I believe, is the most dangerous enemy to all human communicaon, and piety of
intenon is probably the most dangerous, the most virulent and the most self‐sasfying.

Comedy is a very, very, very stringent business.

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

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.

Each character represented a trait that resides in me.

Early experiences convinced me that animals can and do have quite disnct personalies.

Fog and smog should not be confused and are easily separated by color.

Page 1
 Chuck Jones

Fog is about the color of the insides of an old split wet summer co/age ma/ress; smog is the color
and consistency of a wet potato chip soaked in a motorman's glove.

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

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

I let the part of me that is Bugs come to the surface, knowing, with regret, that I can never match
his marvelous confidence.

I started reading when I was about three, a li/le over three.

I would say my mother had more to do with my educaon as an arst, if you want to call me that,
than anything else.

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

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

If you want a midget to look like a baby, don't put a cigar in his mouth.

In 1918, when I was 6 or 7 years old, radio was just coming into use in the Great War.

In 1933 I went to work for Leon Schlesinger and that's where I stayed for 38 years.

Jackie Gleason said that comedy is the most exacng form of dramac art, because it has an
instant cric: laughter.

Page 2
 Chuck Jones

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

Once you have heard a strange audience burst into laughter at a film you directed, you realize
what the word joy is all about.

Painng does what we cannot do ‐ it brings a three‐dimensional world into a two‐dimensional

plane.

The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the
noise of flowers and the smell of birds ‐ the birds were chickens and the flowers dried sunflowers
ra/ling against a wall.

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 acon.

The Coyote is limited, as Bugs is limited, by his anatomy.

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

The only thing an adult can give a child is me.

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

The rules are simple. Take your work, but never yourself, seriously. Pour in the love and whatever
skill you have, and it will come out.

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

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

Page 3
 Chuck Jones
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.

To give the Coyote a look of ancipatory delight, I draw everything up ‐ the eyes are up, the ears
are up, and even the nose is up. When he is defeated, on the other hand, everything turns down.

We must not confuse distoron with innovaon; distoron is useless change, art is beneficial
change.

Well, direcng is doing the key drawings, not the key animaon, mind you.

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

You cannot take anything for granted.

Page 4