Guillermo Del Toro

I don't try to sanction other people's joy in monsters. I mean, I think the fact is, humor, fantasy - you know, like fear, desire or laughter - create genres of their own: comedy, melodrama, or erotic films or horror films... The boundaries cannot be defined. It's to each his own.

As a director, I design every movie to be true to itself, and damn it if they like it, and damn it if they don't.

If you ask me, I alternate between truly bizarre, what you would call 'Hollywood' movies and truly bizarre, what you would call 'arthouse' movies.

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.

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.

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.

The way they control a population is by pointing at somebody else - whether they're gay, Mexican, Jewish, black - and saying, 'They are different than you. They're the reason you're in the shape you're in. You're not responsible.' And when they exonerate you through vilifying and demonizing someone else, they control you.

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

When I was a child, I was raised Catholic. Somewhere, I didn't fit with the saints and holy men. I discovered the monsters - in Boris Karloff, I saw a beautiful, innocent creature in a state of grace, sacrificed by sins he did not commit.

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

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

You cannot dictate what people find funny, what people find attractive, or what people find scary. There is not a norm.

I see myself as a perennial expatriate because, frankly, I don't think I fit comfortably in any conventional form of filmmaking, and I feel at the same time, depending on the project, I fit into many different ones.

I have said no to many, many Day of the Dead projects in the past, about 10 or 15, because every time I heard a take it was from someone who didn't know the celebration.

What is scary to me is silly to somebody else. CG isn't scary to me. It's like comedy - comedy and horror are quite similar, in that there'll always be somebody who'll say, 'I don't think that was funny.' And it's the same with things that are meant to be scary.

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.

Most of the time - in 'Pan's Labyrinth' or 'Devil's Backbone' - I'm talking about my childhood.

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.

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

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

"What makes a man a man?" a friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins? The way he comes to life? I don't think so. It's the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them.