Born in 1941 in Tokyo, Miyazaki Hayao’s passion for flying stemmed from his father’s involvement in airplane manufacturing.
He began his animation career at Tōei Animation in 1963. There, he forged relationships with Takahata Isao, a collaborator and Ōta Akemi, whom he later married. His notable early works included “Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro”.
Rise to Prominence: Miyazaki’s distinct style emerged with “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind”, a manga that led to a film.
He co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985. Although initial US releases faced challenges, his domestic works, including “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Princess Mononoke”, were successful.
Acclaimed Works: “Spirited Away”, released in 2001, won numerous awards and became Japan’s top-grossing film.
This success was followed by movies such as “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Ponyo”. Miyazaki also contributed to “The Secret World of Arrietty” and “From Up on Poppy Hill”.
Later Years: “The Wind Rises” (2013) focused on WWII engineer Horikoshi Jiro and was Miyazaki’s supposed final film.
However, he came out of retirement for “Kemushi no Boro”, his first fully computer-animated project. In 2015, Miyazaki was honored with an Oscar for his lifetime achievements.
Hayao Miyazaki is the cofounder of Studio Ghibli.
Here are some of the best quotes by Hayao Miyazaki.
Best Hayao Miyazaki Quotes
It would be wonderful if I could see the end of civilization during my lifetime. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I get inspiration from my everyday life. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Currently computer graphics are used a great deal, but it can be excessive. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Utopia exists only in one’s childhood life. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I can’t stand modern movies. The images are too weird and eccentric for me. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
There’s no future for people who worship the future and forget the past. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I wish I was better at art. I love some of the great artists of the 19th century and, compared to them, I just feel I lack this technique that they had. They have so much skill. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
When I start creating a villain, I start liking the villain and so the villain is not really evil. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I’d like more of the world go back to being wild. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Plants exist in the weather and light rays that surround them – waving in the wind, shimmering in the sunlight. I am always puzzling over how to draw such things. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Airplanes are the most beautiful when they are in the air. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Cut off a wolf’s head and it still has the power to bite. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Engineers turn dreams into reality. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Famous Hayao Miyazaki Quotes
Maybe that’s what these films are doing. They are my way of blessing the child. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
We live in an age when it is cheaper to buy the rights to movies than to make them. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Rather than making that a good project, I like to make the kinds of films that children can understand in five minutes what the film is about. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Life is a winking light in the darkness. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I’m not going to make movies that tell children, you should despair and run away. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Children understand intuitively that the world they have been born into is not a blessed world. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Those are shrines. Some people believe spirits live in them. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Virtual reality is a denial of reality. We need to be open to the powers of imagination, which brings something useful to reality. Virtual reality can imprison people. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
There are so many ships in the animation sea that are computer driven, that I think we can have at least one that’s just a log raft that we can row by hand. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Whenever someone creates something with all of their heart, then that creation is given a soul. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Always believe in yourself. Do this and no matter where you are, you will have nothing to fear. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Chihiro, huh? Her real name’s Chihiro? Can’t beat the power of love. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Young people are surrounded by virtual things. Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Popular Hayao Miyazaki Quotes
The creation of a single world comes from a huge number of fragments and chaos. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I create women characters by watching the female staff at my studio. Half the staff are women. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
If you’re going to retire, retire early. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I don’t intentionally make deep movies. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I think it’s really good for a family or children to have a dog, cat, bird or whatever to grow up with. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
You always have to appeal to your audience. You always have to consider how well your project will do in terms of admissions. I abandoned many stories because of that. But I don’t get too down about it. It’s something I accepted from the time I decided to work in films. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Reality is for people that lack imagination. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I’ve never studied psychology. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
The greatness of a mind is determined by the depth of its suffering. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Life is suffering. It is hard. The world is cursed. But still, you find reasons to keep living. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I am an animator. I feel like I’m the manager of a animation cinema factory. I am not an executive. I’m rather like a foreman, like the boss of a team of craftsmen. That is the spirit of how I work. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Top Hayao Miyazaki Quotes
At the time, sword and sorcery stories were quite popular. There were female warriors waving swords around as well, but the genre is populated entirely with people who have absolutely no responsibility to anyone, so I knew my story would have to be completely different from any of these. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku! ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
My process is thinking, thinking and thinking – thinking about my stories for a long time. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I don’t like games. You’re robbing the precious time of children to be children. They need to be in touch with the real world more. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
All my films are all my children. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Nobody has the right to sit in judgment and decide what’s good or bad for you. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I’ve become skeptical of the unwritten rule that just because a boy and girl appear in the same feature, a romance must ensue. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I would like to make a film to tell children it’s good to be alive. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I think we should stop using nuclear power plants because it’s an old system that we can’t control. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Prizes do not mean anything to me. I think it is more important to make a child aware of the existence of a weird creature like a water spider that breathes through its backside. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Great Hayao Miyazaki Quotes
We each need to find our own inspiration. Sometimes it is not easy. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
We get strength and encouragement from watching children. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I make films as a business, not as a cultural endeavor. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
What you mean by ‘peace’ is nothing more than the endless repetition of human folly. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
The principle I adhere to when directing, is that I make good use of everything my staff creates. Even if they make foregrounds that don’t quite fit with my backgrounds, I never waste it and try to find the best use for it. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
You should despair and run away. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
The love of weaponry is often a manifestation of infantile traits in an adult. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I find it pointless sitting in my house not working, though I like to go on extended vacations from time to time. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
When I say I get inspiration from my real life, I think of my real life as extending about 300 meters radius around me. So what I see in that area is what inspires me. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Wise Hayao Miyazaki Quotes
I myself become terrified of death when I am in a negative state of mind. But the thought of death ceases to bother me once I become productive. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I do believe in the power of story. I believe that stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, that they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
There has never been a work of art created which didn’t somehow reflect its own time. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I believe that fantasy in the meaning of imagination is very important. We shouldn’t stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind, and of the imagination. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
People in Japan have experienced many tsunamis and various earthquakes throughout the ages. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
See with eyes unclouded by hate. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Since I am a person who starts work without clear knowledge of a storyline, every single scene is a pivotal scene. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
Humans have both the urge to create and destroy. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
I like underwater life. ~ Hayao Miyazaki.
So these were the 75 top quotes about Hayao Miyazaki.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Wilma Rudolph quotes and Aretha Franklin quotes.
