Life & Mortality Quote by Ralph Bakshi

There is a particular kind of longing in Bakshi's phrasing: not the tidy nostalgia of an artist reminiscing, but the itch of someone who knows exactly how expensive his obsession is. "Very passionately" reads like a corrective, as if he's preempting the assumption that he simply aged out of animation or drifted into easier work. Then he undercuts it: "Not continuously". The desire comes in waves, not as a lifestyle brand. That stop-start rhythm feels true to a medium that can be both intoxicating and punishing - months (years) of labor, endless compromises, financing headaches, the grind of making thousands of decisions no one will notice unless you get them wrong.

The subtext is that animation, for Bakshi, isn't a genre; it's a state of mind that requires total possession. "Every once in a while" suggests the craving returns when he sees a gap in the culture: a story no one else will risk, a visual language live action can't handle, a chance to be unruly again. And "I would die to do another film" isn't just a figure of speech - it's a wink at the bodily cost of directing animation, and also at how much of himself he has historically put into it.

Context matters: Bakshi is a filmmaker whose legacy is tangled up with provocation and innovation, and whose relationship to the industry has often been combative. The quote reads like a veteran looking at a medium now bigger than ever, while still remembering how hard it was to make adult, idiosyncratic animation when the market wanted it safe, cute, or corporate. The passion remains; the conditions rarely do.