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 am an artist, you understand? For me, a picture is like poetry. When you make art, this is not coming from an intellectual place. It's coming from the deep side of your unconscious, your soul.

My writing routine is everyday I put a record on, the same one since 20 years. Then I burn a stick of incense, I put perfume here on the insides of my soles, I paint my left testicle red, and I write.

Santa Sangre is the picture I love the best, myself, because El Topo and The Holy Mountain I made with my head, and Santa Sangre I made with my feelings, with my heart. It's an emotional picture. And it's more real for me, that picture.

Birds born in cages think that flying is a disease.

Awakening is not a thing. It is not a goal, not a concept. It is not something to be attained. It is a metamorphosis. If the caterpillar thinks about the butterfly it is to become, saying ‘And then I shall have wings and antennae,’ there will never be a butterfly. The caterpillar must accept its own disappearance in its transformation. When the marvelous butterfly takes wing, nothing of the caterpillar remains.

You need to fight in order to count. Don't be afraid to believe the impossible and then fight with yourself to ameliorate yourself. Do it. Believe in yourself. Let a good seed be a good seed now, and then we'll have a good tree.