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I never wanted to be a puppeteer. I stopped puppeteering when I was about 18. I puppeteered when I was eleven years old to 18 to make extra money to go to Europe, which I made half of and my parents gave me half.

If anyone would have been paying serious attention to my puppet shows, I would have been sent to therapy very young.

I don't see anyone walking around with a puppet on his hand in real life. Puppet therapy is very common for children. It's not something that adults take on.

When I was a kid, I never saw a puppet show. I never played with puppets or had any interest in them.

When I was eight, I bought my first puppet. It was a monkey, and I paid five cents for it. I collected some scrap wood and built myself a puppet theatre. I made 32 cents with my first show, which I thought was pretty good, and that's when I knew I would be a puppeteer when I grew up.

I bought a tape recorder and some stuff and went to Europe for three months when I was 18. The puppeteering was only there as a hobby. I wanted to be a journalist. When I was 19, and after I had spent about a year in college, Jim Henson asked me to come out and try puppeteering for awhile.

Puppet camp truly redefined my preconceptions of puppetry... I'll never forget learning that before a puppet can speak... he has to inhale. It's those details that make the characters truly come to life.

I had a desire to prove to myself that I was actually in control - that I wasn't a puppet.

I wasn't very good as a puppet. A lot of times in a movie, you need a really good puppeteer: you're sort of a puppet, and you're doing what you can. But I always, from the beginning, was kind of making up my own stuff from stand-up and sort of directing myself, so I wasn't very good in movies where I didn't have control.

I don't mind being called a puppet. But I'm the puppet of the people.