15 Walt Disney Quotes on Storytelling

Walt Disney quotes on storytelling

14. Until a character becomes a personality it cannot be believed. Without personality, the character may do funny or interesting things, but unless people are able to identify themselves with the character, its actions will seem unreal. And without personality, a story cannot ring true to the audience.

17. For every laugh, there should be a tear.

26. We like to have a point of view in our stories, not an obvious moral, but a worthwhile theme. ... All we are trying to do is give the public good entertainment. That is all they want.

32. Fantasy, if it's really convincing, can't become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time. In this new dimension, whatever it is, nothing corrodes or gets run down at the heel or gets to look ridiculous like, say, the celluloid collar or the bustle.

55. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be twelve years old. They patronize; they treat children as inferiors. I won't do that. I'll temper a story, yes. But I won't play down, and I won't patronize.

64. A good ending is vital to a picture, the single most important element, because it is what the audience takes with them out of the theater.

68. Comedy is fine, but if a story has 'heart', the audience is apt to remember it longer.

76. Fantasy, when properly done in the one medium best adapted to its nature, need never stale for the family taste.

97. I take great pride in the artistic development of cartoons. Our characters are made to go through emotions which a few short years ago would have seemed impossible to secure with a cartoon character. Some of the action produced in the finished cartoon of today is more graceful than anything possible for a human to do.

109. If the audience is conscious of the music during the screening of a picture (not a musical), it is over-written. Music should augment the story, not take over.

135. People are always analyzing our approach to entertainment. Some reporters have called it the 'Special Secret' of Disney entertainment. Well, we like a little mystery in our films, but there's really no secret about our approach. We're interested in doing things that are fun - in bringing pleasure and especially laughter to people. And we have never lost our faith in family entertainment - stories that make people laugh, stories about warm and human things, stories about historic characters and events, and stories about animals.

141. Sheer animated fantasy is still my first and deepest production impulse. The fable is the best storytelling device ever conceived, and the screen is its best medium.

142. Since the beginning of mankind, the fable-tellers have not only given us entertainment but a kind of wisdom, humor, and understanding that, like all true art, remains imperishable through the ages.

170. We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.

186. Disney, for all his pining for a perfect world (embodied in his depiction of a turn-of-the-century Main Street), did not entirely ignore the authentic. He did kill Bambi's mom, remember. He did permit, perhaps encourage, the occasional sense of danger.