I think that in the past, in the '50s and '60s, after the existentialists and beatniks and hippie movements, the big deal was, Don't sell out. We live in a society that by virtue of the speed we communicate and sell, everything sells. The danger is buying in; that your concern becomes success, rather than fulfillment. They're two different beasts, and my feeling is that you should seek fulfillment. You should not measure your worth in how much you have or how popular you are, but how happy you are with what you do.

Night is real. Night is not an absence of light, but in fact, it is daytime that is a brief respite from the looming darkness.

It’s as hard to explain as a sexual proclivity. Some guys like high-heeled shoes. I like horror.

You can only be a good father in relationship to your childhood.

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.

But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.

When you shoot in America, you have huge beams of sunlight in the windows, very vivid sunlight - it's faster in a way.