Terrorists are not bad; they are limited by circumstances. They are human beings. I am very, very, very sad when they explode themselves and kill 40 to 60 persons. It's terrible. But also, I am sad for them, a young person who lost his whole life. It's terrible. They are limited by religion, by politics, by economical interests.

I wanted to make a film that gave the people who took LSD at that time the hallucinations that you get with that drug, but without hallucinating.

If art is not a medicine for the society, it is a poison.

Movies have an enormous power to open the mind and the heart and everything. You are sitting and seeing something moving in front of you, and then your mind goes into a trance. You are completely there. It's a real great art; it's not only a business. It's to open the mind, to understand this mystery within reality. This is why we need it.

For many years, I did pantomime with Marcel Marceau. I was a writer for him and got to know very well how to use the body for illustration. I wanted to do a mother without arms, but using the arms of her son in Santa Sangre. The tragedy should always have something funny. Something weird.

I grew up in the north of Chile, and this is why there are a lot of religious symbols in my pictures, because the Catholic Church in Latin America is very strong. If I was born in Japan, I would speak about Buddhism, but I was born in South America.

Five cats and a woman. That is all I need in life.