There's something worse than not making a movie. It's doing it for the wrong reasons. Then you end up putting three, four, five years of your life into it and you come out with a thing that you're not proud of.

What is fantastic for me is that the Romantic movement comes out as a counter balance to everything that has been accumulating since the Age of Reason. I think the downfall of imagination as a genre or as a perception starts with the Age of Reason, which says everything else that came before us, all those superstitions, all those myths, are childish.

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.

You need to adjust your compass to an obtainable goal.

I have a sort of a fetish for insects, clockwork, monsters, dark places, and unborn things

For horror to work, you have to be afraid. You have to keep the monster in a black and white light.

I think we live our lives seeking the shortest route, the closest parking space - everything quick, cheap, fast. And it's not better. Two-thirds of the satisfaction of getting something is the process of getting it.