Guillermo del toro quotes

I started when I was eight, doing super 8 films

I see horror as part of legitimate film. I don't see it as an independent genre that has nothing to do with cinema.

You may occasionally be hurt by the sort of cavalier cruelty of commentary if you go into online forums, so there’s definitely a maturity about not seeking validation from everyone, every single time.

The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on.

The way I see film is I think film is like going out to dinner. I feel it's a banquet. You don't want to have the same food you have at home. You want to go and eat a fantastic Chinese meal or Italian or Greek.

You need to adjust your compass to an obtainable goal.

I have a sort of a fetish for insects, clockwork, monsters, dark places, and unborn things

Hellboy is the first movie where both ends of the spectrum are combined

I believe in man. I believe in mankind, as the worst and the best that has happened to this world.

Survival often feels like an indignity.

I think that during the shoot, you should never be there, unless something goes really wrong and as producer, you're responsible. The sign you did your job right is if you are not there.

I only produce directors and movies that I have a lot in common with.

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.

I think once a Catholic, always a Catholic. You never escape. I still have Catholic guilt. It is in its basis a really powerful religion and a really strong set of beliefs. They permeate my work in many ways.

At some point, in order to gain his identity, the kid goes "I'm not my dad" or "I'm not my mom."

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 panic

Without context, things are not scary. Without context, like humor, horror doesn't work.

You live and die two or three times making a movie. First, you write it, and the first pivotal moment comes when you can get it made. The second is in the process of making it, when the movie reveals itself to you, its flaws and its virtues. Then the most unnerving moment is when that movie is then launched into the world. It’s like bringing your kid to the first day at school and somebody points out that it has bowlegs, it is cross-eyed, or it’s gorgeous. You feel very exposed.

There is beautiful in the grotesque.

I only produce things that have so much in common with what I like. I wanna understand what I'm doing. I wanna understand the instincts that are going to inform the story.

I was part of a group that had a cinema club so every week we would project two or three movies on 16 or 35mm.

I think that is the ultimate cowardice, when someone makes your choices for you in an institutional way. And you just say, "Well, I have no other option."

The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7.

I feel that we have, as Mexicans, two things: one, a natural distrust of institutions. I hate organised religion, I hate organised politics, I hate the idea of the military and the police. Because we grew up distrusting all these sacred institutions, the only thing you have left is a vague, national sense of impending doom. Why do we drink and how are we so merry? Because we know that pretty soon, our time's up. There is a sense of fatality that makes us pretty chirpy people. You try to live. The only reason that dying is important is that it gives life sense.

There's something worse than not making a movie. It's doing it for the wrong reasons. Then you end up putting three, four, five years of your life into it and you come out with a thing that you're not proud of.

I thought the tooth fairy was a very creepy concept as a kid. "Put your tooth under the pillow." I was like "Why does someone want my teeth?".

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.

For me, lost causes are the only ones that are worth fighting for. The other stuff is not worth fighting for.

You can only be a good father in relationship to your childhood.

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.

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.

If you're doing a big spectacle film, you've got to be mindful of large masses. Even then, you've got to be responsible only to your storytelling.

video games are the comic books of our time... It's a medium that gains no respect among the intelligentsia".

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.

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.

I like John Carpenter. I like some of his films more than others

There are two types of producing deals, and I've had both. I've produced over 20 movies now. You are either watching in horror, as the cars take the curve in the grand prix, or you're enjoying it.

"What makes a man a man?" a friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins? The way he comes to life? I don't think so. It's the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them.

My favorite novel in the world is Frankenstein. I'm going to misquote it horribly, but the monster says, "I have such love in me, more than you can imagine. But, if I cannot provoke it, I will provoke fear."

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.

I think video games are going to completely take over storytelling in our society. Video games are not a fad.

I don't want to move over to Beverly Hills. My goal is to make the movies I want to make and support the people I want to support. That's it.

When I was a teenager there was no video in my country. Betamax came to Mexico very slowly.

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.

People tend to think that big things only happen to big people ... I think that is not true. The small decisions we make every day define who we are and define the world around us. ... But I bet to you there is a decision every day in your life where you affect somebody else.

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.

If film making is magic, there's a difference between close up magic and David Copperfield. If you're doing close up magic, which independent filmmakers do, it is a very delicate craft, interpersonal relationship, and being able to enrapture a very small audience.

If you get bored with nothing to do, you are not a writer.

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.

For horror to work, you have to be afraid. You have to keep the monster in a black and white light.

Producing is great because you learn.

Well I think effects are tools

I think that The Eye is a particularly Americanized take on horror

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.

Even if one understands that what one is doing is mad, it is indeed still madness -

You can't explain success in retrospect. The moment you leap into the void, that moment is impossible to negate, after success.

You give yourself to the world for people to either praise or destroy.

: 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.

For eight years I did effects for other movies until I got my movie made

The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.

I think that in the past, in the '50s and '60s, after the existentialists and beatniks and hippie movements, the big deal was, Don't sell out. We live in a society that by virtue of the speed we communicate and sell, everything sells. The danger is buying in; that your concern becomes success, rather than fulfillment. They're two different beasts, and my feeling is that you should seek fulfillment. You should not measure your worth in how much you have or how popular you are, but how happy you are with what you do.

I love REAL set construction and think that sets are very important part of the storytelling and scope of a film.

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.

Any legend, any creature, any symbol we ever stumble on, already exists in a vast cosmic reservoir where archetypes wait. Shapes looming outside our Platonic cave. We naturally believe ourselves clever and wise, so advanced, and those who came before us so naïve and simple...when all we truly do is echo the order of the universe, as it guides us.

I think we live our lives seeking the shortest route, the closest parking space - everything quick, cheap, fast. And it's not better. Two-thirds of the satisfaction of getting something is the process of getting it.

The other thing that I started doing for myself was, I went through my diary of ideas that I keep and made sure that the translation of the comic to the movie was good.

The only thing you can do as an artist is to come to the world, see what no one is doing, and leave behind one or two things that wouldn’t have happened without you.

I believe, as a producer/director, your duty is to create a beautiful horror film that really resonates.

Screenplay is the toughest form of writing for me, because you need to be in present tense. You need to be describing things as they occur.

Studios look backward. Filmmakers look forward.

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.

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.

Your heart is uncomplicated. It knows what it knows and acts accordingly. Greater wisdom is hard to find.

The reality is that I feel that fear is a very spiritual emotion.

I always thought what if you took a myth of childhood like the tooth fairy and made it a central scary thing. We did it on Hellboy and we did it on 'Don't be afraid of the dark'.

Imagine, there is almost no possibility for a foreign language film to be distributed in America right now. That doesn't just make the industry poorer, it makes the landscape of cinema poorer, in America. The impossibility to get a good release on a really good European, Latin American, Asian movie is a tragedy.

I try to find inspiration in books, paintings, illustrations and the one thing I try to avoid is just being inspired by other movies, because then you just are talking about movies in movies. I try to talk about movies that are culturally and spiritually a little more diverse.

Power revealed is power sacrificed. The truly powerful exert their influence in ways unseen, unfelt. Some would say that a thing visible is a thing vulnerable.

Well, the first thing is that I love monsters, I identify with monsters.

I had gotten to the point where I just didn't want to perform anymore - I didn't want to be on the chopping block anymore. I started to want to withdraw and retreat from it.

When you work with a great director, you can have a great partnership.

You can always go back to not making any money, and then you get the freedom. And I'm going to continue doing it, because it really is a fantastic sense of liberation.

If you don't take it personally, the partnership between producers and directors is very intimate.

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.

...to all the monsters in my nursery: May you never leave me alone.

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.

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.

I think when you get all the money and all the freedom, rarely do you get a good movie out of it or a movie that you're proud of.

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.

You have to believe the magic to see it.

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.

As a child that was disenfranchised from everything, and that was in a world that was the wrong size, run by the wrong people, the wrong morale and the wrong rules, I felt completely outside of that, and I wanted some measure of control, and the measure of control I found was through fear.

I feel that your ambitions should always exceed the budget. That no matter what budget you're doing, you should be dreaming bigger than the budget you have, and then it's a matter of reigning it in to the reality. You try to make things count.

I think Hollywood has a habit of developing 100 times more than they actually shoot.

I love the creation of these things — I love the sculpting, I love the coloring. Half the joy is fabricating the world, the creatures.

I think damage to the eye or damage to the teeth is one of the most universally cringing things you can do in a movie and these are very fragile sounds.

You think if you work hard enough, you can fix the precious things you've broken - rather than being careful with them in the first place.

Films are fantastic - they are one of the peaks of human narrative. But I'm sorry to break the news to the movie industry: So is a video game.

In a world where we are so pragmatic and materialistic, fear is the only emotion that allows even a sophisticated person to believe in something beyond.

When the monster has a dimension that allows you to humanize it, that's the route I usually want to go.

In real life, what scares me is politicians, corporations and people that think they know what the world should be.

When you see something or experience something extraordinary, you can't go back to normal... I think that that's the way I see the supernatural-as happening in mundane circumstances or to people who are unprepared.

Ghosts are a metaphor that can be interpreted so many different ways. There's no ending to what you can do. You can make it a fun ghost story. You can make it a deeply disturbing, psychological ghost story.

Night is real. Night is not an absence of light, but in fact, it is daytime that is a brief respite from the looming darkness.

You only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.

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.

I love monsters. If I go to a church, I'm more interested in the gargoyles than the saints. I really don't care much about the idea of normal - that's very abstract to me. I think that perfection is practically unattainable but imperfection is right at hand. So that's why I love monsters: because they represent a side of us we should actually embrace and celebrate.

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.

I only produce movies that have something stylistically different, so that I can learn from the experience of producing.

There are men who bloom in chaos. You call them heroes or villains, depending on which side wins the war, but until the battle call they are but normal men who long for action, who lust for the opportunity to throw off the routine of their normal lives like a cocoon and come into their own. They sense a destiny larger than themselves, but only when structures collapse around them do these men become warriors.

Oliver Stone will never be happy with the first take. He wants more than that. When you’re delivering your lines, he’ll stop you and tell you some kind of riddle about the character and you have to go away and figure that out. If you’re hoping for him to give you all the answers, then you’re in for a long day.

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.

My life is a suitcase. I am the traveling Mexican.

I would much rather see somebody bring something new to a genre than produce something that seems safe.

People think you're like The Godfather, waiting for scripts to come in. But, you're hustling, you're desperate, you're panicked and you're horrified. The movie you think you're going to do next, you don't do. The movie you think you're never going to do, you make.

Genius is the true mystery, and at its edge--the abyss.

I believe that the physical effect, the physical set, whenever you can, is ten times better than the digital effect.

Movies that look safe are less interesting.

There's nothing that defines who you are more than boundaries, whether you cross them or not, in every aspect of your life, and horror is a really great boundary.

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.

Never fly commercial. That's the moral of this story.

If you're not operating on an instinctive level, you're not an artist.... Reason over emotion is bullshit, absolute bullshit... We suffocate ourselves in rules. I find fantasy liberating.

We're in three living groups, 'cause even after the world's ended some assholes still can't get along.

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.

I like actors that are good with pantomime and that can transmit a lot by their presence and attitude more than through their dialogue