Quotes from Guillermo del Toro

It's so much easier when you're promoting a movie that you like!

I think looking is the essential act of loving. Brothers, fathers and sons, lovers, whatever. What you do when you love someone is look at that person as that person is.

I feel that your ambitions should always exceed the budget.

The creature from the black lagoon - I drew that creature almost every day, two, three times a day, for probably my first ten years of life, you know.

You can't explain success in retrospect. The moment you leap into the void, that moment is impossible to negate, after success.

To me, movies are books. They are texts to be consulted.

I think there is a very quiet power in things that are not on screen.

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

I'd love to come back as the most annoying ghost ever.

I would have killed to do 'Beauty And The Beast' at Warners, which went away. I would have killed to do 'The Witches' at Warners that went away. God knows there are many, many of them. All I can do is diligently do the screenplay, diligently do the design work, deliver a budget, and then await a decision.

I wrote a screenplay for 'The Witches,' which Alfonso Cuaron was producing, but we couldn't get it made! The studio just wouldn't greenlight that movie. It's my favorite Roald Dahl book, 'The Witches,' because I grew up with my grandmother a lot of the time, and the relationship between the boy and the grandmother speaks volumes to me.

I saw a martyr in the Wolf Man, who is the very moving essence of outsiderness, with which I identified fully.

video games are the comic books of our time... It's a medium that gains no respect among the intelligentsia".

When you start with Super 8, you are everything. You're the DP, the sound man, the effects guy. And what I started understanding, by working for other people, is that the best type of director is someone who rose through the ranks.

You cannot convince a Buddhist to become a Protestant any more than you can convince a person who embraces realism as the highest form of art that fantasy is an equally important manifestation. It's impossible.

I'm not that interested in recreating reality. I'm interested in recreating an emotional truth.

I'd grab the camera and tell people what to do, and when I was 14, someone told me that it was called directing.

The great thing about Roald Dahl is he tackled the big questions of life without any fear of being shocking or brutal, because he knew the kids could take it.

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

A lot of Mexican Catholic dogma, the way it's taught, it's about existing in a state of grace, which I found impossible to reconcile with the much darker view of the world and myself, even as a child.

If you want to know how to handle a crew, it's great to be part of a crew.

Love is love. And it's much better than hatred and fear.

I truly try to create beauty and reflection and all of that as conscientiously and judiciously and minutely as I can.

In the case of 'Shape Of Water,' I want it to feel like a song. I wanted people to come out of the movie humming the movie.