Quotes from Guillermo del Toro

Knowing was the worst part. Awareness of insanity does not make one any less insane. Awareness of drowning does not make one any less of a drowning person—it only adds the burden of panic.

I say making movies is like eating a sandwich of shit. Sometimes you get more bread, sometimes less bread, but you always get shit." (Guardian interview 2006)

All belief systems are elaborate fabrications, if logic is followed out to the end.

It is not faith that distinguishes our real leaders. It is doubt. Their ability to overcome it.

When she finally wrapped her arms around the girl, the softness stirring in her heart frightened her. It was dangerous to be soft in this world.

Rod Serling once observed, "The greatest fear of all is fear of the unknown, which you can't share with others.

For brief as water falling will be death, and brief as flower falling, or leaf, brief as the taking, and the giving, breath; thus natural, thus brief, my love, is grief. —CONRAD AIKEN It doesn't matter if the water is cold or warm if you're going to have to wade through it anyway. —PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

It's a terrible thing, isn't it? To be dragged under?

Science has made many advances in my lifetime, but the instrument has yet to be invented that can see clearly into the marriage of a man and a woman.

This is what the beginning of the end of the world will look like

It's a situation doomed enough to laugh at, but he thinks of what he used to tell his students. Imagine being a planet. Don't laugh, he'd tell them. Try to imagine it. Eons of loneliness, and then one day your ellipsis peaks toward that of another planet and there is a gasp of nearness. Wouldn't you try to make the most of it? Wouldn't you, too, combust and flare and explode if you had to?

God is an energy, rather than an anthropomorphic being, and God's language is biology. Red blood cells, the principle of magnetic attraction, neurological synapse: each is a miracle, and in each is the presence and flow of God.

Her mother said fairy tales didn't have anything to do with the world, but Ofelia knew better. They had taught her everything about it.

Carmen Cardoso believed the most dangerous tale of all: the one of the prince who would save her.

The only piece of home Ofelia had been able to take with her were some of her books. She closed her fingers firmly around the one on her lap, caressing the cover. When she opened the book, the white pages were so bright against the shadows that filled the forest and the words they offered granted shelter and comfort. The letters were like footprints in the snow, a wide white landscape untouched by pain, unharmed by memories too dark to keep, too sweet to let go of.

History is written by the victor.

You never truly know who you are until you get really, deeply hurt.

The room smelled milky, of vanilla and almond, from the breakdown of chemical compounds in the old paper.

If past wrongs are not addressed, and dealt with honestly, dark spirits will erupt through the unhealed seam. It is the same for cities and towns as it is for people.

Zelda is black and fat. Yolanda is Mexican and homely. Antonio is a cross-eyed Dominican. Duane is of mixed race and has no teeth. Lucille is albino. Elisa is mute. To Fleming, they are all the same: unfit for other work and therefore easy to trust.

I don't like him," said Gus. "Never did. Guy bitches about what he doesn't have, loses sight of what he does have, and is never happy. He's what you call a - what's that word?" "Pessimist?" said Fet. "Asshole," said Gus.

Cars get girl names. Guns get guy names. What do knives get?

I don't think there is life beyond death, I don't. But I do believe that we get this clarity in the last minute of our life. The titles we achieved, the honors we managed, they all vanish. You are left alone with you and your deeds and the things you didn't do. And that moment of clarity gives you either peace or the most tremendous fear, because you finally have no cover, and you finally realize exactly who you are.

Y ahí estaba Edith, dorada y radiante como el sol. Romeo había dicho lo mismo de Julieta; ese amor había tenido un destino funesto, pero para ellos…