Guillermo del Toro Quotations

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

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

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

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

I'd grab the camera and tell people what to do, and when I was 14, someone told me that it was called directing.

I think there is a very quiet power in things that are not on screen

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

It's only in modern times that we have come to glorify vampirism.

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

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

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

I started when I was eight, doing super 8 films

I was directing before I knew it was called that.

In that, Blade 2 is very much like a rock concert... if it's too loud, you're too old.

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

I think there are movies that are so gigantic that you need a second unit

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 am going to mind the grosses, the opening box offices but why I am concerned with mostly is for the movie to be what I want it to be.

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.

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.

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.

You have to believe the magic to see it.

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…

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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…

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

The underground of the city is like what's underground in people. Beneath the surface, it's boiling with monsters.

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

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.

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

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.

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

for in the absence of God he had found Man. Man killing man, man helping man, both of them anonymous: the scourge and the blessing.

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.

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

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.

There is beautiful in the grotesque.

It’s as hard to explain as a sexual proclivity. Some guys like high-heeled shoes. I like horror.

I think part of making movies is dealing with restrictions of freedom and budget. I'd rather deal with restrictions of budget. It's better to feel free within any budget.

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 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.

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

: 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.

Survival often feels like an indignity.

Studios look backward. Filmmakers look forward.

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.

Producing is great because you learn.

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.

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.

...there's something about maternal love - it might just be the strongest human spiritual bond there is.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Well I think effects are tools

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.

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

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.

You’ll meet her. She’s very pretty, even though sometimes she’s sad for many days at a time. You’ll see, when she smiles, you’ll love her.

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.

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.

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.

Normally a period movie has a lot of problems with the graphics. They look modern made.

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.