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.

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.

When somebody says something I don't agree with, I say I'd rather not. It comes to the point where that is the strongest form of resistance. As a Mexican, it took me a long while to learn one word in English, "no". And that is the one word we have in common.

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

: 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.

I really believe that in the larger sense, not only today but at all times, you only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.

I thought the tooth fairy was a very creepy concept as a kid. "Put your tooth under the pillow." I was like "Why does someone want my teeth?".