Quotes by Jim Henson
"First of all, don't feel bad that I'm gone. While I will miss spending time with each of you, I'm sure it will be an interesting time for me, and I look forward to seeing all of you when you come over. To each of you, I send my love. If, on this side of life, I'm able to watch over you and help you out, know that I will. If I can't, I'm sure I can at least be waiting for when you come over. This all may sound silly and over-the-top to you guys, but what the hell? I'm gone, and who can argue with me?
Life is meant to be fun, and joyous, and fulfilling. May each of yours be that—having each of you as a child of mine has certainly been one of the good things in my life. Know that I’ve always loved each of you with an eternal, bottomless love. A love that has nothing to do with each other, for I feel my love for each of you is total and all encompassing. Please watch out for each other and love and forgive everybody. It’s a good life, enjoy it."
—Jim, in a letter to his children for when he died
Quotes about Jim Henson
"There's no question about Jim Henson's great artistry and the extent that which we've all been touched by it. Whether the audience was American or European, Japanese or Indian or African, Jim's characters reached them, taught them, and entertained them. But greater than Jim's artistry was his humanity. Unless you have moved among the peoples of this earth, who have so little hope for the future of their lives, you will never really understand how Jim Henson has made a difference for them. Those desperate places where parents watch their children grow, knowing they'll never be educated, who will never have a chance at life as it should be? These same parents watch as Jim's creations, for the first time, not only put smiles on the faces of their children, but develop in them the appetite to learn, watching Sesame Street, and the ability to love, because they see the love and the caring that exudes from the Muppets and the Henson family of creatures. This was the Jim Henson I knew."
"In a business where the one who shouts the loudest usually gets the most attention, Jim Henson rarely spoke above a whisper. You had to lean in to hear him most of the time, but it was always worth the effort. David Lazer and I knew how loud his whisper was. He was a man with a vision, and though his greatest appeal was to the simplest of human emotions and the purest of ideas, he was not above using advanced technological means to achieve his goals. My friend Jim was by most definitions a genius, but not like Edison suggested. Edison said genius was one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration; with Jim, I think it was about 50-50. His ability to create whole worlds of people and things is well documented, and we'll have that legacy forever. But after coming up with a concept, he'd work tirelessly on every phase of the process, to see that it was the best it could possibly be. As a rule, perfectionists are a real pain; they drive the people around them crazy in a single-minded search for excellence. But Jim inspired people to be better than they thought they could be - to be more creative, more daring, more outrageous, and ultimately, more successful. And he did it all without raising his voice. That whisper will stay with all of us for a long time. Now we'll just have to listen a little harder to hear it...."
—Bernie Brillstein
"Jim Henson was a master storyteller, whose most popular appeal focused on the adventures of a frog and his friends. But there were other kinds of stories he also told; fantastic stories for which he invented entire worlds and enormously complex creatures. The faster Jim's imagination ran, the more delight he took in finding a technology to achieve this. He used tools of the special effects trade, and then went outside the film world to find technology that hadn't ever been used before, and even try that out. With craftsmen at his Creature Shop in London, he developed fantastic creatures that were operated by cables, electronic rods, computers and all sorts of radio controls. But the human drama was always there, lying at the heart of the story and creating the reason for his imaginary worlds to exist."
"How can you pay tribute to someone as special as Jim Henson? He had taught the children of the world with Sesame Street, entertained the planet with The Muppet Show, and instilled valuable morals in the viewers of Fraggle Rock. He advanced the art of filmmaking with The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, created incredible television shows such as Sam and Friends with no budget, and shows such as The Storyteller with a huge budget. Generations of children had grown up seeing Kermit the Frog on Sesame Street, Muppet Babies, The Muppet Show and the Muppet movies, to the point that the world accepted the character as a celebrity. Jim trained hundreds of creators with a patient attitude, commanded film sets with a soft whisper, and kept the world's most influential people on the edge of their seat with a mere hum. Jim Henson was a brilliant, creative, hard-working and talented person, but he was also one very important thing: lucky. He had the resources, he had the opportunities, and he had the privilege to pursue and obtain a life of creative success. He had more drive and talent than he knew what to do with, his internal ticking clock forcing him to produce as much as possible, but he also had a fair share of circumstance and, most importantly, in his eyes, support. Jim was quick to acknowledge how fortunate he was to have a family of people throughout his life that encouraged him. But in the end, Jim believed that he and everyone else only needed... just one person."
—DefunctTV, "The Final Jim Henson Hour"
There's a parallel universe where Donald Trump died in 1990 but Jim Henson lived. We are the dystopian alternate future.
—Ken Jennings, via Twitter, January 31, 2016
