Academy Awards Acceptance Speech Database

CHUCK JONES:
Well, what can I say in the face of such humiliating evidence? I stand guilty before the world of directing over three hundred cartoons in the last fifty or sixty years. Hopefully this means you've forgiven me. When, in 1931, I came stumbling out of Chouinard Art Institute into the arid maelstrom of the Great Depression in the wan hope that I could resume my school career as a janitor, a miracle occurred so staggeringly unexpected and unbelievable that I find it incredible even today. Somebody offered to pay me to draw. And so this miracle continues. For nearly seventy years I've been paid adequately, if not lavishly, for doing what I enjoy doing most. A miracle indeed. Robert Frost expresses it best: "My object in life," he said, "is to unite my avocation and my vocation, as my two eyes are one in sight." My deepest thanks for this signal and shining award, and my love to Marian and Linda and to the laughing denizens of Termite Terrace, wherever you are. Thank you.