Bullfighting is anachronistic - you enter into a bullring and you're leaving behind the values of the world outside the ring. I suppose that what I would want to acknowledge is that perhaps the tension, the crucial tension, isn't necessarily between the view of bullfighting as a tradition versus as an art form, but between the values inside the ring and the values outside the ring.

Acting requires focus, too, but acting doesn't, you might say, demand focus. When you're in the ring you don't even have to think about focus because the danger is so imminent. Imminent. You train and you prepare and then the adrenaline kicks in and drives you into focusing intensely. You'd better focus, right? Or else you'll make your exit on a stretcher.

You kill, it's part of your world as a bullfighter, it's a natural part of your world, and then you leave that world and it becomes unnatural.

Madrid reacting with the forceful protection of bullfighting as an art form is an example of the survival of the old values.

A bull will try to outwit you. It will stop and hook when the last thing you expect from it is that it will stop and hook.

In one era the majority puts its faith and sympathy with the bullfighter, in another with the bull.

For me, bullfighting was this very spiritual engagement with power, with power and death. You're pitting yourself against a force that's stronger than you and then you're winning or losing. It's power, a power play.