“I don't think it is as much a human foible as it is a human curse that we cannot understand the beauty of a thing until it is gone.”

“I have found that the people who shout their opinion the loudest are usually the ones most insecure in their position.I don't think it is as much a human foible as it is a human curse that we cannot understand the beauty of a thing until it is gone.It's not that there wasn't anything to say. It's that there was too much and words were poor substitutes for our feelings.But Korczak's greatest legacy is not a public one, the massive stone mountain that he conquered, but the mountain he first conquered in himself-a mountain that he climbed alone-in this we can all empathize. (about the sculptor of Crazy Horse)”

“It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand...”

“[pitching the proposal for Mononoke-hime (1997)] There cannot be a happy ending to the fight between the raging gods and humans. However, even in the middle of hatred and killings, there are things worth living for. A wonderful meeting, or a beautiful thing can exist. We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation. What we should depict is, how the boy understands the girl, and the process in which the girl opens her heart to the boy. At the end, the girl will say to the boy, "I love you, Ashitaka. But I cannot forgive humans." Smiling, the boy should say, "That is fine. Live with me.”

“Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is -- whether its victim is human or animal -- we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity.”

“As much as I don't care about those things, I think it's human nature to not want to feel totally insignificant.”