Quotes from Guillermo del Toro

I love monsters the way people worship holy images. To me, they really connect in a very fundamental way to my identity.

Well I think effects are tools.

You'll meet her. She's very pretty, even though sometimes she's sad for many days at a time. You'll see, when she smiles, you'll love her.

As a first-time director, you cannot have final cut. But as a producer, you can have final cut.

I love REAL set construction and think that sets are very important part of the storytelling and scope of a film.

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

I see horror as part of legitimate film. I don't see it as an independent genre that has nothing to do with the rest of cinema.

I think we live in a culture that is actually hedging all of it towards comfort and immediacy, things that scare me. All the things that they sell us as a way of life scare me.

The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.

If you give an actor a green screen, the shot may work, but that green screen will not inspire you on the set as a director or as an actor.

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.

If you get bored with nothing to do, you are not a writer ... We are in the business of reproducing reality from nothing. We are the biggest liars in the world, seeking truth.

I started seeing in the monsters as a more sincere form of religion because the priests were not that great, but Frankenstein was great.

...there's something about maternal love - it might just be the strongest human spiritual bond there is.

Somebody said to me, in a very well-meaning way, at a screening, "We love the movie but it's too violent. If you tone down the violence you could reach a great audience of kids.".

I'm a big fan of the Harry Potter books, but I'd love to do one where one of the kids dies, or one of the main characters dies. I love for those things to have a little bit more tragedy.

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.

I like John Carpenter. I like some of his films more than others.

Insects are living metaphors for me. They are so alien and so remote and so perfect, but also they are emotionless; they don't have any human or mammalian instincts. They'll eat their young at the drop of a hat; they can eat your house! There's no empathy - none.

I was directing before I knew it was called that.

The problem with 'Don't Be Afraid of the Dark' was that it was designed to be a PG-13 movie. It was literally a horror movie for a younger generation. I was trying to do the film equivalent of teenage, young adult readers, and when they gave it an R rating, the movie couldn't sustain an R.

Making a film is like raising a child. You cannot raise a child to be liked by everyone. You raise a child to excel, and you teach the child to be true to his own nature. There will be people who'll dislike your child because he or she is who they are, and there will be people who'll love your child immensely for the very same reason.

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?".

In Mexico, you're close to death all the time.