Guillermo Del Toro Quotes

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

But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

You have to believe the magic to see it.

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.

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

There is beautiful in the grotesque.

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.

For Devil's Backbone I loved it but I felt very pressured but so I was neurotic on the shoot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Movies that look safe are less interesting.

Frankfurt, discussing a stuntman: He missed being killed in that shot be literally half an inch.

What happens to me is that I am first and foremost a film geek.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

They're getting more and more experience on what to expect, and the Hellboy audience is such a faithful and fanatic audience as I am, and you have to really be very open about what you do

There are two levels of vampirism: one is the regular vampire, which is just like it has always been; and then there's the super vampires, which are a new breed we've created.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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