Top 275 Quotes & Sayings by Guillermo del Toro - Page 4

I would much rather see somebody bring something new to a genre than produce something that seems safe.

And yet one carries the sins of his forebears as one carries their features in his face. One bears their blood, and their honor or their blight.

I was an altar boy, a spokesperson for the Virgin Mary, I was a choir boy but then at the age of 14 I discovered masturbation and all that went out the window.

You think if you work hard enough, you can fix the precious things you've broken - rather than being careful with them in the first place.

Survival often feels like an indignity.

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

In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh– whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish– thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust.

I only produce directors and movies that I have a lot in common with.

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

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.

Even if one understands that what one is doing is mad, it is indeed still madness -

Oliver Stone will never be happy with the first take. He wants more than that. When you?re delivering your lines, he?ll stop you and tell you some kind of riddle about the character and you have to go away and figure that out. If you?re hoping for him to give you all the answers, then you?re in for a long day.

Imagine, there is almost no possibility for a foreign language film to be distributed in America right now. That doesn't just make the industry poorer, it makes the landscape of cinema poorer, in America. The impossibility to get a good release on a really good European, Latin American, Asian movie is a tragedy.

If film making is magic, there's a difference between close up magic and David Copperfield. If you're doing close up magic, which independent filmmakers do, it is a very delicate craft, interpersonal relationship, and being able to enrapture a very small audience.

I like actors that are good with pantomime and that can transmit a lot by their presence and attitude more than through their dialogue

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.

Well I think effects are tools

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.

You need to adjust your compass to an obtainable goal.

I absolutely am a big Call of Duty fan. Every time a new Call of Duty comes out – I never play the games online, but I play the solo version super fast. My family knows not to interrupt me the day they come out, they know it's a sacred date for me. I think my favorite visually, of all of the Call of Duty games -- even if it's not as sassy and high tech -- is World at War because. That game has some really incredible episodes in Berlin and the Japanese fields. It's really quite arresting for me, visually, and it was very immersive. But I love Modern Warfare, too.

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.

If you're doing a big spectacle film, you've got to be mindful of large masses. Even then, you've got to be responsible only to your storytelling.

Studios look backward. Filmmakers look forward.

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

When somebody says something I don't agree with, I say I'd rather not. It comes to the point where that is the strongest form of resistance. As a Mexican, it took me a long while to learn one word in English, "no". And that is the one word we have in common.

The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7.

I am the nice adversary, the guy that's going to ask the tough questions and is not going to be happy with the quick answer.

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

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.

I have my library separate from the family home, and every room is a different genre. The only room that I can guarantee I've read everything is the horror room.

Hellboy is the first movie where both ends of the spectrum are combined

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

There's something worse than not making a movie. It's doing it for the wrong reasons. Then you end up putting three, four, five years of your life into it and you come out with a thing that you're not proud of.

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?".

Screenplay is the toughest form of writing for me, because you need to be in present tense. You need to be describing things as they occur.

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.

I really believe that in the larger sense, not only today but at all times, you only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think.

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

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 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.

I think there are movies that are so gigantic that you need a second unit

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.

I find I'm waking up really early now, just to read. Waking up at ungodly hours. But I try to keep up, religiously. When I was a kid, it used to be a book a day. Then a book a week. Now it's like a book every two weeks. But I read every day.

I love the idea of creating a sort of nuanced portrait of kids that they're not all perfect. They're kind of misfits but not in a picturesque, hip way, they're really, really kids that are not entirely great.

If we have a choice in how we die, I would say that's a privilege. I think we have a sort of prudish approach to death in the West, though certainly not in Mexico. In Mexico, it's a little bit freer. We're not so precious about it.

If at age 10 I say there are monsters in the basement and they don't believe it, I would have stayed in that house. My father would have said "Shut up and get to your room." So I thought the only sanctioned tyranny in the world is parenthood and everybody goes "Yeah." It's a dictatorship - parenthood.

Its a bit cloudy in London but people are already drinking out on the streets- God Bless the pubs.

I believe that the physical effect, the physical set, whenever you can, is ten times better than the digital effect.

I had gotten to the point where I just didn't want to perform anymore - I didn't want to be on the chopping block anymore. I started to want to withdraw and retreat from it.

I'm the freaky version of that superhero who says, wherever there is injustice, I shall be there. Whenever there is a difficult project, I'd like to be there.

At some point, in order to gain his identity, the kid goes "I'm not my dad" or "I'm not my mom."

I think that The Eye is a particularly Americanized take on horror

I don't want to move over to Beverly Hills. My goal is to make the movies I want to make and support the people I want to support. That's it.

I think making small movies reminds you of the effort. When you make big movies, the effort is to fight for freedom. When you make small movies, the effort is making the day, making the budget, and it's great, too.

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'.

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

When you have the intuition that there is something which is there, but out of the reach of your physical world, art and religion are the only means to get to it.

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

Never fly commercial. That's the moral of this story.

You may occasionally be hurt by the sort of cavalier cruelty of commentary if you go into online forums, so there’s definitely a maturity about not seeking validation from everyone, every single time.