Guillermo del Toro
If we have a choice in how we die, I would say that's a privilege. I think we have a sort of prudish approach to death in the West, though certainly not in Mexico. In Mexico, it's a little bit freer. We're not so precious about it.Collection: Thinking
If at age 10 I say there are monsters in the basement and they don't believe it, I would have stayed in that house. My father would have said "Shut up and get to your room." So I thought the only sanctioned tyranny in the world is parenthood and everybody goes "Yeah." It's a dictatorship - parenthood.Collection: Father
When I see a short schedule, my question to the director is, are you really comfortable with this, or are you doing it to be a good boy? At the end, you only win the medal if the film is good, you don't win a medal if the movie is on time.Collection: Winning
In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh– whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish– thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust.Collection: Art
When somebody says something I don't agree with, I say I'd rather not. It comes to the point where that is the strongest form of resistance. As a Mexican, it took me a long while to learn one word in English, "no". And that is the one word we have in common.Collection: Long
Oliver Stone will never be happy with the first take. He wants more than that. When youre delivering your lines, hell stop you and tell you some kind of riddle about the character and you have to go away and figure that out. If youre hoping for him to give you all the answers, then youre in for a long day.Collection: Character
Studios look backward. Filmmakers look forward.Collection: Looks
I'm the freaky version of that superhero who says, wherever there is injustice, I shall be there. Whenever there is a difficult project, I'd like to be there.Collection: Superhero
Hellboy is the first movie where both ends of the spectrum are combinedCollection: Firsts
I have my library separate from the family home, and every room is a different genre. The only room that I can guarantee I've read everything is the horror room.Collection: Home
I absolutely am a big Call of Duty fan. Every time a new Call of Duty comes out – I never play the games online, but I play the solo version super fast. My family knows not to interrupt me the day they come out, they know it's a sacred date for me. I think my favorite visually, of all of the Call of Duty games -- even if it's not as sassy and high tech -- is World at War because. That game has some really incredible episodes in Berlin and the Japanese fields. It's really quite arresting for me, visually, and it was very immersive. But I love Modern Warfare, too.Collection: War
You can only be a good father in relationship to your childhood.Collection: Father
We're in three living groups, 'cause even after the world's ended some assholes still can't get along.Collection: Groups
Never fly commercial. That's the moral of this story.Collection: Stories
Normally a period movie has a lot of problems with the graphics. They look modern made.Collection: Looks
When I stage a violent scene, I try for it to serve a purpose. I do love those things, the makeup effects. But I love them more with the monsters. I never was much of a gore guy. I've always enjoyed just creating monsters.Collection: Makeup
I have "fat-guy syndrome." If they give me $50 million to make a movie, I'll try to make it look like it cost a hundred. If they give me $60 million, I'll try to make it look like it cost $120.Collection: Giving
The movies that I do are in love with cinema, and I try to show that I am in love with cinema. I want them to be, in other ways, drinking from other sources.Collection: Drinking
With every movie I produce, I learn something. I watch the directors. It's like the relationship you have with your children. I'm there to learn from my daughters. They are the perfect spirits.Collection: Daughter
What is fantastic for me is that the Romantic movement comes out as a counter balance to everything that has been accumulating since the Age of Reason. I think the downfall of imagination as a genre or as a perception starts with the Age of Reason, which says everything else that came before us, all those superstitions, all those myths, are childish.Collection: Thinking
I only produce movies that have something stylistically different, so that I can learn from the experience of producing.Collection: Different
: There are only two on-buttons for fear, in any permutation you want. One is when something that shouldn't be is, meaning a presence. And, the other one is an absence.Collection: Two
I don't try to define the cosmos, I know it's unknowable, but I can understand my place in the world and my place in the universe through a mixture of Taoism, Catholicism, Zen or whatever I have at hand.Collection: Hands
There are a lot of period movies where they say, 'This is a portrait of Lady Whatever.' And it's done in like a 1950s or 60s style.Collection: Style
What we read and why we do so defines us in a profound way. You are what you read, I suppose. Browsing through someone’s library is like peeking into their DNA.Collection: Dna
Genius is the true mystery, and at its edge--the abyss.Collection: Genius
I believe, as a producer/director, your duty is to create a beautiful horror film that really resonates.Collection: Beautiful
If you get bored with nothing to do, you are not a writer ... We are in the business of reproducing reality from nothing. We are the biggest liars in the world, seeking truth.Collection: Liars
My life is a suitcase. I am the traveling Mexican.Collection: Mexican
The fairies in the ancient notion of fairies, they are not positive and cute and twinkly.They can be incredibly nasty or they can be incredibly benign. It's a really interesting mythology when you dig into it.Collection: Cute
I am the nice adversary, the guy that's going to ask the tough questions and is not going to be happy with the quick answer.Collection: Nice
When you have the intuition that there is something which is there, but out of the reach of your physical world, art and religion are the only means to get to it.Collection: Art
For eight years I did effects for other movies until I got my movie madeCollection: Movie
We are such skeptics that we find it difficult to believe in God and angels and a spiritual afterlife, but a moment of fear makes our spirit so vulnerable that it allows us to believe in something beyond that.Collection: Spiritual
There are times when you are in despair, because in order not to betray who you are, you don't compromise, you don't make movies that would be very lucrative or prestigious or easily understood. And yet I stay attached to the most uncanny premises. It's never been easy.Collection: Despair
I'm a movement Nazi. It used to be my way before. Now, in the last three projects. I found a way to let the actors find their comfort and still find the precision in the show. It's a change in me.Collection: Way
It's the difference between a parable and a pamphlet. A parable discusses things that are relevant in the past, the future, and the present - regardless of the outcome in the present. A pamphlet, on the other hand, is completely concerned with affecting an outcome in the present, the most immediate present.Collection: Past
Survival often feels like an indignity.Collection: Survival
...there's something about maternal love - it might just be the strongest human spiritual bond there is.Collection: Spiritual
I really believe that in the larger sense, not only today but at all times, you only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.Collection: Believe
I see horror as part of legitimate film. I don't see it as an independent genre that has nothing to do with cinema.Collection: Halloween
I think when the joke comes from the situation in a horror film, it's really great. I don't like jokey horror films like where people are cracking a joke or being post-modern about it.Collection: Thinking
With supernatural things, I have heard ghosts, but I've never seen ghosts. I do seek ghosts and I would love to see one, but I would crap my pants.Collection: Pants
I was an altar boy, a spokesperson for the Virgin Mary, I was a choir boy but then at the age of 14 I discovered masturbation and all that went out the window.Collection: Boys
And yet one carries the sins of his forebears as one carries their features in his face. One bears their blood, and their honor or their blight.Collection: Blood
Awareness of insanity does not make one any less insane. Awareness of drowning does not make one any less of a drowning person--it only adds the burden of panicCollection: Insanity
The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7.Collection: Desire
I love the idea of creating a sort of nuanced portrait of kids that they're not all perfect. They're kind of misfits but not in a picturesque, hip way, they're really, really kids that are not entirely great.Collection: Kids
The idea for me is that if the movie connects with you the way I want it to connect with you, you should be experiencing both the horror and the wonder as a child would. From a child's point of view. When we're kids, brutality registers differently than when we are adults. Because as adults, we get too used to violence.Collection: Children