Guillermo del Toro Quotes

Well I think effects are tools

When you work with a great director, you can have a great partnership.

I don't try to define the cosmos, I know it's unknowable, but I can understand my place in the world and my place in the universe through a mixture of Taoism, Catholicism, Zen or whatever I have at hand.

It's the difference between a parable and a pamphlet. A parable discusses things that are relevant in the past, the future, and the present - regardless of the outcome in the present. A pamphlet, on the other hand, is completely concerned with affecting an outcome in the present, the most immediate present.

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'.

When I was a teenager there was no video in my country. Betamax came to Mexico very slowly.

I try to find inspiration in books, paintings, illustrations and the one thing I try to avoid is just being inspired by other movies, because then you just are talking about movies in movies. I try to talk about movies that are culturally and spiritually a little more diverse.

When I see a short schedule, my question to the director is, are you really comfortable with this, or are you doing it to be a good boy? At the end, you only win the medal if the film is good, you don't win a medal if the movie is on time.

Normally a period movie has a lot of problems with the graphics. They look modern made.

Your heart is uncomplicated. It knows what it knows and acts accordingly. Greater wisdom is hard to find.

With every movie I produce, I learn something. I watch the directors. It's like the relationship you have with your children. I'm there to learn from my daughters. They are the perfect spirits.

With supernatural things, I have heard ghosts, but I've never seen ghosts. I do seek ghosts and I would love to see one, but I would crap my pants.

You need to adjust your compass to an obtainable goal.

: 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.

Ghosts are a metaphor that can be interpreted so many different ways. There's no ending to what you can do. You can make it a fun ghost story. You can make it a deeply disturbing, psychological ghost story.

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

You have to believe the magic to see it.

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

There are a lot of period movies where they say, 'This is a portrait of Lady Whatever.' And it's done in like a 1950s or 60s style.

I believe in man. I believe in mankind, as the worst and the best that has happened to this world.

I think that during the shoot, you should never be there, unless something goes really wrong and as producer, you're responsible. The sign you did your job right is if you are not there.

When the monster has a dimension that allows you to humanize it, that's the route I usually want to go.

America is old tobacco: gold and green. It's lush and literally feels like wealth, like optimism, turn of the century America where everything was blooming.

We're in three living groups, 'cause even after the world's ended some assholes still can't get along.

Producing is great because you learn.

The movies that I do are in love with cinema, and I try to show that I am in love with cinema. I want them to be, in other ways, drinking from other sources.

I think damage to the eye or damage to the teeth is one of the most universally cringing things you can do in a movie and these are very fragile sounds.

The other thing that I started doing for myself was, I went through my diary of ideas that I keep and made sure that the translation of the comic to the movie was good.

I love the creation of these things — I love the sculpting, I love the coloring. Half the joy is fabricating the world, the creatures.

For me, lost causes are the only ones that are worth fighting for. The other stuff is not worth fighting for.

I have "fat-guy syndrome." If they give me $50 million to make a movie, I'll try to make it look like it cost a hundred. If they give me $60 million, I'll try to make it look like it cost $120.

The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on.

I love monsters. If I go to a church, I'm more interested in the gargoyles than the saints. I really don't care much about the idea of normal - that's very abstract to me. I think that perfection is practically unattainable but imperfection is right at hand. So that's why I love monsters: because they represent a side of us we should actually embrace and celebrate.

Films are fantastic - they are one of the peaks of human narrative. But I'm sorry to break the news to the movie industry: So is a video game.

The idea for me is that if the movie connects with you the way I want it to connect with you, you should be experiencing both the horror and the wonder as a child would. From a child's point of view. When we're kids, brutality registers differently than when we are adults. Because as adults, we get too used to violence.

There are times when you are in despair, because in order not to betray who you are, you don't compromise, you don't make movies that would be very lucrative or prestigious or easily understood. And yet I stay attached to the most uncanny premises. It's never been easy.

You only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.

I think Hollywood has a habit of developing 100 times more than they actually shoot.

The only thing you can do as an artist is to come to the world, see what no one is doing, and leave behind one or two things that wouldn’t have happened without you.

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

I think video games are going to completely take over storytelling in our society. Video games are not a fad.

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

for in the absence of God he had found Man. Man killing man, man helping man, both of them anonymous: the scourge and the blessing.

I think when you get all the money and all the freedom, rarely do you get a good movie out of it or a movie that you're proud of.

The way I see film is I think film is like going out to dinner. I feel it's a banquet. You don't want to have the same food you have at home. You want to go and eat a fantastic Chinese meal or Italian or Greek.

What happens to me is that I am first and foremost a film geek.

The underground of the city is like what's underground in people. Beneath the surface, it's boiling with monsters.

I think when the joke comes from the situation in a horror film, it's really great. I don't like jokey horror films like where people are cracking a joke or being post-modern about it.