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

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.

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

I feel that we have, as Mexicans, two things: one, a natural distrust of institutions. I hate organised religion, I hate organised politics, I hate the idea of the military and the police. Because we grew up distrusting all these sacred institutions, the only thing you have left is a vague, national sense of impending doom. Why do we drink and how are we so merry? Because we know that pretty soon, our time's up. There is a sense of fatality that makes us pretty chirpy people. You try to live. The only reason that dying is important is that it gives life sense.

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 always thought what if you took a myth of childhood like the tooth fairy and made it a central scary thing. We did it on Hellboy and we did it on 'Don't be afraid of the dark'.

As a first-time director, you cannot have final cut. But as a producer, you can have final cut.