"Then I started to understand. On Batman Returns, I got so upset I flipped out and I don't think a couple of people at the studio forgot that--I was so angry, it was scary."
-Tim

""I've had trouble since Frankenweenie. It's this puritanical thing, the board thinks I'm trying to subvert something. I was shocked then and now I go into my annual shock."
- Tim.

"There is no fight at all with the ratings board: 'Cuz we cut off heads and didn't make him an Avon lady."
- Tim on Sleepy Hollow.

"I'm not sure what I do. I know I wave my arms around a lot, but I'm not sure it's meaningful in any way."
- Tim Burton, on his directing methods.

"If you weren't making movies, what do you think you'd be doing?"
"Wandering out into the desert drooling and talking to myself."
- Tim, during a Sleepy Hollow Q&A..

"If you lived in Sleepy Hollow, what would be your occupation?"
"Town idiot."
- Tim, still during a Sleepy Hollow Q&A..

"Hello Tim, I was wondering (as a fellow Vincent Price fan) which of his movies was your favorite?"
"OO, so many! It might have to be one of the Roger Corman Poe films. Usher, Pit and the Pendulum or Tomb of Ligia."
- Tim, still during a Sleepy Hollow Q&A. Here only because you just know he got all hyped up.

"What are you doing to be for Halloween?"
"I might try going as a human this year."
- Tim, still during a Sleepy Hollow Q&A.

"You seem to have maintained the gothic approach to your films with "Sleepy Hollow", does it dissappoint you to see the shift of style in the Batman films from the dark image, which was quite authentic to the comic strip, to the more playful approach taken at the moment, which I believe is more akin to the television series?"
"It's hard to know what is scarier, a Gothic sort of approach, or a more Ice Capades approach."
- Tim, still during a Sleepy Hollow Q&A.

"The films of Vincent Price. . .spoke to me specifically for some reason. Growing up in suburbia, in an atmosphere that was perceived as nice and normal (but which I had other feelings about), those movies were a way to certain feelings, and I related them to the place I was growing up in. I think that's why I related so much to Edgar Allen Poe. I remember when I was younger, I had these two windows in my room, nice windows that looked out on to the lawn, and for some reason my parents walled them up and gave me this little slit window that I had to climb up on a desk to see out of. To this day I've never asked them why; I should ask them. So I likened it to that Poe story where the  person was walled in and buried alive. Those were my forms of connection to the world around me. It's a mysterious place Burbank."
- Tim on his childhood.

"Nothing like a little blood for a laugh."
- Tim, during the Sleepy Hollow DVD commentary.

"I tried to stick in sheep wherever I could. I don't know why, but... I just like the sound of sheep."
- Tim, during the Sleepy Hollow DVD commentary.

"I think in the next movie, I'll try not to kill Lisa."
 - Tim, during the Sleepy Hollow DVD commentary.

"See, it's a happy ending after all... see? Jumping sheep. Very happy."
- Tim, during the Sleepy Hollow DVD commentary.

"Well... I guess it's Martha Stewart's house. Martha Stewart when she's old and crazy."
- Tim, during the Scissorhands DVD commentary.

"I think it was during the sixth take that Johnny didn't come back. He was in the bushes, throwing up."
- Tim, during the Scissorhands DVD commentary.

"Yeah, I like to move things. I guess I'm just a frustrated interior designer."
"Aren't we all?"
- Tim and Paul Reubens, during the Pee-Wee DVD commentary.

"Believe me, if I want to make a movie about bestiality, I'll do it without a major studio."
- Tim.

"I love 'em. I dunno... bugs, man! They're all around us. I dunno! Everyday life! I dunno! Maybe it's growing up with those bug movies of the 70s. Remember Frogs? It's the ecology- we're going to start seeing more of it, I guarantee you. A horrible new trend, just like the 70s. The nature-strikes-back movies. Aaarrrggghhh! Even as we speak, they're hatching away."
- Tim. On crack. Enough said.

"I'll never forget this meeting. 'See, Beetlejuice doesn't test, but House Ghosts is going through the roof.' I remember going, 'House Ghosts?' Then I said, as a joke, 'Why don't we call it Scared Sheetless?' And they considered it, until I threatened to jump out the window."
- Tim.

"We were in Tokyo in a car talking to two other people, in this sleazy night club area, and it's really crowded, with all these lights, like Las Vegas, and Lisa goes, 'Stop the car.' I don't know how she saw this dog like fifty yards away in a little cage on the street. So yeah, we got that dog in Tokyo. Poppy, she did good."
- Tim.

"You'll never get me into a tux. Not until I'm dead and I have no choice because that's what the undertaker put me in."
- Danny on formal wear.

"It's convenient in a way, because you don't have to answer many questions: People say, 'Man, how are you feeling?' And I say, 'How do I look?' And they go, 'Oh, OK.' I've got the coffin maker calling every now and then about measurements, wanting to give me a proper fit."
- Danny on being overworked.

"My entire life has been one continuing nightmare. God help me."
- Danny

"I don't mind getting beaten up by a director."
- Danny.

"Where should composers go who want to get their music placed in a film(songs/soundtrack/themes,etc.)?"
I would suggest a good long stay in a nice quiet sanitarium. Make sure you find one with pretty nurses and lots of strong drugs. Masturbation four times and strong drugs. Masturbation four times a day is also an excellent exercise in becoming a film composer. I put most of my music up my butt, not knowing where else to place it."
- Danny

"If I was just a film composer, I'd be very unhappy. It's very, very intense work, especially the kinds of movies I do. I get much too close to the projects. I end up cruising for a bruising every time I do a film. I set myself up for a massive disappointment if it doesn't come out just the way I want it to. I have no doubt that I'd be suicidal very quickly. I need to do something else to break it up. Also the work is so hard. I work seven days a week, 12 hours a day, when I'm scoring. And to be able to go back and write songs is my vacation. That's what I'm doing now, until probably April."
- Danny

"I was especially shocked because I didn't know the nominations had happened and my agent woke me up at six in the morning - and I'd only been asleep about three hours. It was like, "What the fuck are you calling me for?!" My first reaction was that he'd had a car accident."
- Danny on award nominations, as well as why not to call him at 6 in the morning.

"Once you get down to the nitty gritty , all the technology doesn't mean shit. That technology comes down to pencils and how many hours you can write before you get cramps in your right hand and have to stop and run around screaming."
- Danny

"I generally write about things I'm angry about. I also have to laugh at myself and everything I do and try to keep a certain humor involved in everything. Otherwise, I'd just go nuts. On the other hand, everything isn't tongue in cheek at the same time. "Little Girls" is tongue in cheek, but "Grey Matter" and "Nothing to Fear" are not tongue in cheek. "Grey Matter" is real obvious. It says they will force you to bend over and they will fuck you in the ass unless you say no, and that happens on many different levels so that is not to be taken lightly."
- Danny

"So, as the Internet gets cleaner, my interest in it diminishes wildly. You know, because I'm just looking for the sickest little corners that I can find, and they're getting harder to find. You have to spend more time getting there. Because the last couple times I went on, I found all kinds of restrictions. You know, I just want to kill them. It's like, I finally find a really interesting topic and it's restricted - I can't pull it up. And, you know, once again I kind of go, 'yea, America. Thank you for protecting me from this bit of information.'"
- Danny on censorship.

"I mean, I remember at a very early age being repulsed by the idea of Christian Heaven as a reality. It was really scary to me. I was just really hoping they weren't right. The idea that it's white, that everything's white, and it's sunny and it's all this glowing light. I've always had an aversion to light, and I've always had an aversion to sun, so it made it sound like this horrible day at the beach. If there truly is a punishment Hell out  there, for me, I'm gonna die and I'm gonna open my eyes and I'm gonna be at the MTV Beach House for eternity. That's the worst thing that I could come up with for myself. If there was like a punishment that's as bad as it gets, it'd be that I'm forever at the MTV Beach House."
- Danny on Hell.

"The kind of romance I love so dearly... slow and dark, with a hero hung by the neck at the end... Joy!"
- Danny on Sommersby.

"It depends on what you consider an education- survival techniques, yeah. I learned how to disguise myself as either a Protestant or a Catholic religious student, in order to get meals out of missionaries all over the continent of West Africa. Learned how to play hymns on the violin. Anything for food, because there just wasn't a lot to eat out there but rice and peanut sauce. The missionaries would have all this fucking Western food- canned ham, canned vegetables, things like that. After a couple months away from it, I would do anything for it. So I learned how to disguise myself as a good religious boy. I learned how to keep myself alive when I came down with malaria, which was to not go to a hospital, but to find a Peace Corps person's house and knock on their door. When they opened it, I'd collapse and say, 'American.' They'd have no choice but to let me have a cot in their backyard. Where I was, hospitals were more where you went to die than to get better. So, yeah, I learned a few things."
- Danny on Africa.

"It was formed by my brother Rick as a little street theater troupe and the first time I ever saw the name I was in Ghana, West Africa. I had picked up a letter he wrote that said, "Danny you must come back and be musical director of this new little troupe I just started. It's called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo." I read the name and just laughed. I asked him where the Oingo Boingo part of it came from and he said, "Don't know. It just popped up into somebody's head in the middle of the night." And it kind of stuck."
- Danny on the name.

"KROQ. And it's Jed the Fish here this afternoon with...oh, and Richard (Richard Blade, a KROQ DJ) is having a blast right now, diving in Roatan, down in Honduras. I'm so jealous. But, Danny Elfman-"
"You're not jealous."
"I am! I totally want to be there!"
"Diving in what?"
"In this place in Honduras called Roatan. You've been to South America."
"Oh, I thought that was some kind of substance, or something he was diving into."
"You had a great time in South America! I was asking you about-"
"Alright, alright! You're right again; you're always right. Jesus!"
"... how excited you were when you played for 30,000 people-"
"See, you're making me bitchy!"
"...in Brazil. You said they all knew the lyrics and they were mouthing the lyrics, 30,000 people in Brazil. You were thrilled as pee to be down there."
"You're right. Again, of course. How many years have we done this, Jed?"
"Well, I don't know but, uhhh... if that question annoys you, how about-"
"It doesn't annoy me."
"...all these years of me asking you-"
"It makes me...it makes me feel... ticklish all over."
"It does? Warm and fuzzy?"
"Yeah."
- A KROQ interview, in which Danny is a bitch.

"You're breaking out in goosebumps, Jed."
"That's right."
"And his nipples just got hard. Now, I don't know what that means, but I'm moving to the other side of the studio here."
- The continued torment of Jed the Fish, from the same interview as above.

"Every once in a while the theater would get a musical or a cartoon, and my friends and I would boycott it. My apologies to Disney, who I guess I work for now, but hey, when you're eleven, you're eleven."
- Danny during the Pee-Wee commentary.

"Size doesn't matter, as some people say. And some people even mean it."
- Danny during the Pee-Wee commentary.

"it's better just to sit and watch and go, yes! I do this! Something else writes my music! I'm a pederast! I'm into bestiality! Necrophelia! Come on, lay it on! (Laughs)"
- Danny on the rumor circles. (Pederast? Yay for anarchic vocabulary...)

"Even if they created a category for best Danny Elfman score, they'd still find a reason not to nominate me. There are
a lot of people in the Academy who really hated my guts."
- Danny.

"My daughter had a great time. She is 16 and has known Tim Burton all her life... she tortures him still by constantly calling him Uncle Tim. He goes (makes an exasperated sound). She does that because she knows it annoys him."
- Danny.

"Let's talk about scoring music for film."
"Why talk to me, for God's sake? (laugh) I'm thinking of getting into it someday."
"You ought to give it a try."
"I should give it a try. It seems like these days, just about anybody can do it, so why not?"
- Danny in a 2001 interview.

"My brother returned to Los Angeles and started a theater troupe inspired by Le Grande Magic Circus called the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. He recruited me to become the music director of the Mystic Knights the day after I arrived home with hepatitis. It was like, "you don't have to work hard. Just soak it in and watch while you are getting your health back." (laugh)"
- Danny.

"I just wanted to get the fuck out of high school as fast as I could. I really disliked people my age, for the most part. I just had as much as I could take from teenage boys in general... For the most part, they were so fucking stupid and proud of it that it was mind boggling. (laughs) It probably hasn't changed that much. I just wanted to be around girls. I couldn't stand boys."
- Danny on high school. (Or, boys are dumb.)

"He totally understands the tone I like, which is usually an even mix of funny, tragic, overly dramatic, all at the same time. He understands that it doesn't matter if it's a comedy, a horror movie, whatever. He understands the complexities of things. In my case, he helps us to understand what the hell the movie's all about."
- Tim on Danny

"I know Tim's not always going to use me, I know his personality enough to know he's going to want to try different ideas, different people. But I hope over the course of a number of years that, even if we don't work together on some films, we continue to bump into each other. Because I'm very curious to see what he's going to do, and he's one of those people whose career I very much feel a connetion with. When I'm scoring his films, I'm not compromising myself, only because what he wants is so close to the type of things I like to do. But also because he drives me on in certain directions that are good for me."
- Danny on Tim.

"For me, the most exciting thing was the fact that Tim Burton and I were on the film together. We had a kind of falling out, and hadn't spoken in a while, but we made up and came back together. It felt good, just like a family thing. As often happens in families, it gets very emotional, and you're not calling each other, you don't see each at the next Thanksgiving dinner. Then, time goes by, and you go, 'I really miss that person.' You find that yeah, it's workable, and you resolve these things. We've done some good work together, and I think we both recognize that. Coming back together felt really good, so working with Tim again is very cool."
- Danny on Tim.

"It's something I brought up once or twice: are you sure you want to use this name, that sort of thing, and Tim would go, I don't understand, what? And I realized that it was completely coming from the innocence of Max Fleischer cartoons."
- Danny on Tim on Oogie Boogie.

"It ended. Why does any marriage end? We had a falling out, and that was that. There were many complex reasons, none on the personal level, which I won't really get into."
- Danny on the unexplained post-Nightmare rift. Marriage?

"It was personal. I haven't spoken to him in a couple of years, and I don't expect I ever will again."
- Danny on the rift again. And yes, that answer did change between this quote and the last one.

"I sang all the voices on the demo, except Sally's (it's in falsetto, so it would have been quite ludicrous). Tim and I stayed up all night in the studio, with me in the singing booth and Tim acting the part of record producer. It was great fun, and we were occasionally prone to fits of hysteria. As I layered all the voices--up to twenty for the Halloween chorus--Tim gave me wild hand gestures indicating his approval or disapproval. It was wonderfully insane."
- Danny on recording with Tim.

"Tim, when was the last time I decked ya?"
"When was our last meeting?"
- Danny and Tim. It's rare.

"I dunno... Danny gave himself a big note there..."
- Tim, during the Sleepy Hollow DVD commentary.

"With his tousled 'red thatch and bright eyes committing themselves to perkiness even when he doesn't want them to, Danny Elfman could easily be described as, well, elfin. Though he's quick to assure that he's of Russian-Polish Jewish descent, with a name of inexplicably Germanic origin, it's still tempting to think of him as part sprite, particularly judging from the film scores he's composed in the past eight years."
- Village Voice

"Then came a period of dark and light for Danny Elfman. He wandered alone across western Africa, through Ghana, Mali and Upper Volta, going weeks without speaking to anyone, repeatedly sick for long stretches. "It was a cleansing," he recalls. "I spent months in quiet observance. I was like a ghost." Blossom Elfman recalls finally receiving a telegram from her son after several tense months without a word. "Strings dry," the enigmatic dispatch read. "Send resin."

"Bassist John Avila is relatively quiet, most animated while armed with a bass on stage. Steve Bartek, the tall lanky guitar player, comments on the beauty of Julie Newmar, the original Catwoman. And Danny- well, Danny is being very Danny. It's Good Friday, the Friday before Easter. "What's so good about Good Friday?" he asks no one in particular.
"It's the day Jesus died," someone answers.
"Yeah, so what's so good about it?""

"Even today, wipe away that thin veneer of cool bestowed by careers in rock and the movies and you've still got the uneasy outsider."
- description of Danny.

"His pale lashes give him the sleepy, vulnerable look common to redheads."
- Another description of Danny. Aww, lookit the sleepy little red-headed psycho...

"The songs are excellent statements typical to the dementia that haunts Danny Elfman. Either this guy is a schizophrenic paranoiac or I should have my Amatuer Psychologist license revoked... Elfman is both tormented and thrilled to have the built-in inspiration."
- Yet another description of Danny.

"If there's one project Elfman won't be working on, it's Burton's upcoming biopic of angoraphilic Z-movie-director Ed Wood. Variety reported that the two aren't even speaking. (While not mentioning a rift, Elfman says that the notoriously nonverbal Burton usually limited their collaborative discussions to "a 30-minute dinner or lunch conversation" anyway.) He'll have no name on his tombstone except his own."

"Michael Fleming, the well-connected reporter and gossip columnist for the show-biz weekly Variety, says he believes that Elfman was angry at Burton and backed out of doing the music for Ed Wood.
"Tim is not a very verbal guy, and is hard to communicate with," Fleming says. "He often goes into his bunker and nobody hears from him. Danny might have wanted more out of Tim than he's willing or able to give.""

"In a recording studio one afternoon, a shrunken head nicknamed Uncle Bill looked down on Mr. Elfman and Mr. Burton from the console as a 79-piece orchestra recorded a 90-second cue to accompany a key scene in the movie. Communication between composer and director was as much by glances, raised eyebrows, and guffaws as by words. It is not always that easy, Mr. Elfman said."

"Burton's hands, like his mass of wayward, curly brown hair, seem to have a life of their own. Same for his words. He speaks in fits and starts, skipping to some new idea before he's anywhere near done with the previous one."

"In Chicago (Burton) was a frightened rabbit, furtive, evasive, eyes darting about nervously, a tiny, black-clad stick figure curled up in a fetal position in the corner of a huge, floral hotel-room couch."
- description of Tim waiting for the ticket sales on Batman.

"(Tim) usually gets his point across with his hands; Kathy Baker cites as her favorite piece of direction the time he said, "This script, uh, uh, these words, uh, um, you know, like-" and she realized he wanted her to change her lines."
- Premiere, January 1991.

"(Tim) wouldn't be able to hold on a conversation, he would hide in his hair and he could barely speak. But what he is today was always there. When you have love, you gain confidence. I don't think anyone ever loved Tim, really loved him, in his life."

"So, for me to say what I feel about Tim, it would have to be on paper, because if I said it to his face he would most probably cackle like a banshee and then punch me in the eye."
- Johnny Depp.

"A pale, frail looking, sad-eyed man with hair that expressed much more than last night's pillow struggle... I remember the first thing I thought was, 'Get some sleep', but I couldn't say that, of course."
- Johnny Depp on his first meeting with Tim.

"And Tim just has this mad energy - hair and limbs flying everywhere."
- Helena Bonham Carter

"Tim never finishes a sentence, and he's not the most articulate and clear person. But he will give you a note, and probably say about three words, none of which have much relation to the others, but somehow you understand exactly what he means."
- Helena Bonham Carter

""I don't like Tim Burton's stuff. It sucks.I don't like big, garish stuff. I appreciate that he's at least trying, though. More people need to try."
- Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn. If you saw the movie, you'll know why I'm cracking up at that "big, garish" comment.

"Reading Danny is like reading e.e. cummings. It's different but not a problem. But he's paranoid about it."
- Steve Bartek.

""That cat! Stuffed! Worst thing I ever saw in my life. But then there are a lot of very dark things about Danny. The first time he went to Europe-I was teaching English lit at the time... he sent me a monkey's paw in a box."
- Blossom Elfman, Danny's mother.

""Danny's like some unknown species of animal, an animal from outer space. I fell in love with him when we went on this trip to Mexico for the Day of the Dead. I was utterly taken with him when he told me that as a kid he was afraid to step in puddles-rain puddles-because he was sure people were looking up through them from hell. He's completely obsessed with death. Terrified of it. So many of his songs involve looking at death, looking at himself in the mirror and seeing death. He's got a lot of shrunken heads. They're his little friends. He's not a human being, I can guarantee it."
- Caroline Thompson, an ex-girlfriend of Danny's.

"We were in a shop in New Orleans, and a guy took us down to the basement to show us his special things, and among his special things were actual artworks made by this child murderer. He'd make a doll that represented each kill, and he would burn and maim these dolls. Torture the baby dolls. Danny got down on his knees and begged the guy for this collection."
- Caroline on Danny again.

"Wow! I can't believe it, but Conan was making a joke about Tim and Danny having what seemed like a professional affair, and then Danny came out from back stage and kissed Tim Burton full on the lips!"
- Someone on Yahoo!Clubs. People, do not do this to me!

"Okay, when I first heard about the Burton/Elfman break up --and this was total fabrication on the part of a friend who just wanted to see what kind of face I would make-- this friend told me that it wasn't a professional break up, that a professional break up was just a side effect of the end of their love affair. Danny and Tim were much closer than we thought and it ended the collaboration and Danny's marriage when they were discovered. This kind of crap probably doesn't effect your average film score fan, but it sure puts a new spin on some of Boingo's lyrics and really makes you scratch your head about 'Little Girls.'
I think the friend got the face he was looking for. And lastly, Danny and Tim were never an item. I only mentioned this because I know there are 101 stories as to why they stopped working together, what's one more?"
- Someone on a Elfman messageboard.

"Okay, who wants to wager that next to Danny Elfman's basement studio is a fully equipped Dungeon? He seems to be the type who could fully appreciate the sensations of a spike heel placed at the base of the neck..."
- Someone on the Boingo Lyrics Interpretation website.