Burton: "It's good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way."

Burton: "I have a problem when people say something's real or not real, or normal or abnormal. The meaning of those words for me is very personal and subjective. I've always been confused and never had a clearcut understanding of the meaning of those kinds of words."

Burton: "Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else's dreams?"

Burton: "I am not a dark person and I don't consider myself dark."

Burton: "I've found that the people who play villains are the nicest people in the world, and people who play heroes are jerks. It's like people who play villains work out all their problems on screen, and then they're just really wonderful people."

Burton: "People told me I couldn't kill Nicholson, so I cast him in two roles and killed him off twice."

Burton: "I've always been misrepresented. You know, I could dress in a clown costume and laugh with the happy people but they'd still say I'm a dark personality."

Burton: "It's hard to find logic in things sometimes. That's why I can't analyze things too much, because it often doesn't make much sense."

Burton: "Whether you like it or not, a child really connects you to that time when everything's new. It's so important - not just for artistic endeavors, but for humanity."

Burton: "I think a lot of kids feel alone and slightly isolated and in their own world."

Burton: "You don't know whether chimps are going to kill you or kiss you. They're very open on some levels and much more evil in a certain way."

Burton: "One person's crazyness is another person's reality."

Burton: "Things that I grew up with stay with me. You start a certain way, and then you spend your whole life trying to find a certain simplicity that you had. It's less about staying in childhood than keeping a certain spirit of seeing things in a different way."

Burton: "Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child."

Burton: "I guess I feel so tortured most of the time, when I see someone else feeling tortured, I get a little perverse glee out of it."