Producer

'Zorn' goes to some pretty ridiculous places, but the real comedy is coming from these little observations about life that are not as outlandish as some of the bigger moves in the story. This is a guy who has magical relics and fights weird monsters and is also dealing with very basic work and family things.

I'm a big 'Omega Man' fan because of how insane he seems, just driving around in that car really fast. It has, like, a very strange tone to it.

You always risk people misunderstanding you when you say anything.

I wish we were smart enough that, every time we had an idea for a script, that it was great right off the bat.

I apologize for the song 'Everything Is Awesome.'

I don't want to fail by being conservative; I want to fail by doing something no one has ever done.

That's the beauty of the animation process: It takes so long, you have so many chances to improve it.

Some people survived the neolithic age by being brave, others by being cowardly and smart.

I think we're going to be very embarrassed in a few years when we see a lot more women film-makers. People will look back and ask, 'How did it take so long for you to figure this out?'

We try to stay as open-minded about casting as possible. When you're getting things down on paper, you might even avoid writing down a name, let alone if they have blonde hair or this or that, to stop.

You need pencil miles to be a great artist, animator, or filmmaker, and the sooner you start making mistakes, the quicker you learn.

That might be my epitaph: 'It wasn't as bad as I thought. Here lies Phil Lord.'

The great ideas start flowing when you stop thinking about the obvious way of doing it.

A sense of humour is never a handicap.

Seriously, if 'Superbad' doesn't happen, I don't think 'Jump Street' ever happens.

Having to top yourself is a good problem to have.

I'm a big believer in the transformative, exponential power of art, like a reverse pyramid scheme.

You need to make things and not be so precious about whether they're any good or not. Because I have a secret for you: they're not good. They're flawed, and you need to find out what the flaws are as fast as possible.

In animation, you do so much planning ahead of time; it has to be so precise.

We are so aware of how silly our movies are as we're making them.